Had a guy a few months ago at the flea market who sold me a CIB Gyromite for $3 and said he had "the system with the robot in the box, but I know no one out here would pay $50 for it, so I traded it at game xchange". I made him feel dumb about it and told him to bring his stuff out there. So, I went to the game xchange and the dude behind the counter said the guy did bring one in but he was getting it.

Several years ago, I won an auction for a toploader system, the connectors and two dogbone controllers. Paid about $60 for it.

The package came about 10 days later. I pulled the toploader out and it felt weird, it was too light. I also noticed that the seller sent only the RF converter; there was no AC adapter. Even worse, the two controllers were the regular, rectangle-shaped ones - no dogbones as advertised in the photo.

Fortunately, I had enough adapters to sub one in. I hooked the toploader up and inserted a cart. But it did nothing, I didn't even get power when I depressed the switch. I opened the toploader to peek inside and found that somewhere around 50% of the parts were missing, including the 24-pin connector.

Who in their right mind ransacks a toploader for parts??

I filed a fraud claim with Ebay and they took my side, notifying me that they intended to pursue the seller. Unfortunately, he deleted his account a few days later. He had over 1,000 feedback, 99% of it good, so I don't know why he fled so quickly. But I got my money back thanks to Paypal and Ebay's buyer insurance, so it wasn't a soul-crushing loss.

On the lighter side, my brother and his friends make a movie each summer, and there's always an Office Space tribute where they beat the shit out of old electronics. I donated the toploader and was pretty satisfied to see it get crushed beneath the business end of an aluminum baseball bat.

When I first started getting back to gaming I walked into a Goodwill and they had a CIB R-Type and CIB Chrono Trigger. They were marked $3 each and I had exactly $3 on me. At the time I had no idea these games were worth anything more then $3 so I decided to get R-Type right away as I have never played that game and return for Chrono Trigger later that day with more money. So a few hours went by and I went back to the Goodwill to buy the CT but was told someone had already bought it. I found out later that night on ebay that CT is a $100+ game now. That is what got me hooked on buying every game I come across now!

How about forgotten Ebay auctions?

Was playing Magic on Friday night and forgot about a Zen: Intergalactic Ninja auction (Cart / Box), ended up going for $3.24..... at least I could have cost the other guy more $$ !

I could have gotten a CD-i with a box full of games, including: Zeldas Adventure,Wand of Gamelon,Hotel Mario and Space Ace for about 100€ but the guy wanted to keep them

man, that is a good one for this toppic! karma will bite him in the ass no worries

I just remembered this. My brother bought a lot on eBay of NES. 17 games for $30 shipped. One of the games being RC Pro-am 2. Never got it.

I remember when i first started collecting I saw a top loader with a bunch of games with a good buy it now. Maybe like $70. One of the games was Stadium Events. I saw it in the pic and immediately started going towards the buy it now button. By the time I got to it someone else had bought it. I had viewd the auction for less than 20 seconds at that point. :-(

Ahh this happens to me on a weekly basis. The worst example of this ever happened last summer. Maybe someone remembers my big Genesis haul last summer where I picked up what was left of an ancient rental store:

http://nintendoage.com/forum/mess...

As I said in that thread, she said that she had 100+ boxed NES games that had been in storage since the store closed over a decade ago, and that she'd take a dollar each for them. I gave her my number and said that I'd pay $2 each and to call me as soon as she pulled them out of storage. I called her every week for a month or so, and she kept saying that she was going to take them out. A little while later I see a lot of 89 CIBs on Craigslist located in her town, asking $100 for all of them.

I called her within 10 minutes of the listing, and they were gone. She said that she lost my number...

That really sucks dude!

The mystique of buying up the leftovers from a rental store is soooooo awesome!!! I'm in process of negotiating a similar deal as we speak. Not exactly many hundreds of games, but it's just so cool. You literally feel like you're taking a step back in time.

^ ^ Wait till you see all the store stickers, laminated manuals, hole-punched manuals, writing all over the carts in glittery permanent marker, sunfaded artwork, etc. It really brings out the mystique!!

lmao

Oddly, there are some people who love that kind of stuff. I've had more than a couple buyers say that stickers/laminated manuals/etc are just fine and even preferred. I think there are some people who like that "well-used" look of rental store games. Gives you a sense of history when you are holding onto one. Similar to the attitudes surrounding some other antiques I guess.

That's exactly how I am with my personal collection - I'm not the second coming of Paul or anything, but I kinda do like the stickers, markings, etc.

You should see the copy of Robocop 3 I have for the Genesis. It's tragic, but it works.

Mason and I have had similar discussions regarding rental exclusive games.  I agree, the stickers should stay.  Glad to hear someone else feels the same way!

Damn I was hoping for a second coming. 

That's how I started, I started with the feeligns stickers and everything should be left alone. 

That's how it starts..  Be careful

I have the best/worst Losers Weepers ever. Look up NWC on Wikipedia and note the last sale. In September 2009 I lived in Wichita, KS. I traveled quite a bit with my job so I frequently searched CL outside of my local area. One afternoon I was browsing and ended up on Minneapolis CL. I did my usual "Nintendo" search and found a garage sale ad. You all know the kind of ad I am talking about. This was an ad for a 4 family garage sale with the usual 10 paragraphs in 1 run-on sentence. After I managed to make my way through the ad I came upon the 3 words we all want to see, Nintendo World Championship buried in this horrible mess.The ad also said there were lots of video games so I casually messaged the ad's author and asked about the NWC cart. I asked if the person that had the cart would sell it before the garage sale started (about 1 week in the future if my memory is correct) and after several runaround emails I told the poster I could actually pick the cart up the morning of the garage sale and I was told they would go next door in the morning and "save" the cart for me. I had the next day off (the day of the garage sale)and had to be in KC the day after that. So, like any hardcore NES fan/collector, I left the afternoon before the sale was to begin and headed to Minneapolis, only a 10 hour drive, why not? I arrived in town about 9:00 PM and decided to drive by the sale address. There was no activity and nothing special about the house so I went to my hotel room about 1 mile away. I could not sleep all night knowing what I was about to discover in the morning. Well morning came and I arrived at the address at about 7:00 AM. The ad said they would open at 8:00 AM and NO EARLY BIRDS but I could not help myself. When the first garage opened, I was right there and the first person to browse. The guy actually had a shitload of NES/SNES/SEGA/... games so I casually asked about the NWC cart. He said, "Oh yeah, that game. My neighbor had that and some guys came by last night and offered $20 just to look through her stuff and she let them. One guy found the game and gave her $2000 cash for it, I saw the money and could not believe it." I stood there in shock and horror and as I broke down and told the guy why I was there. He told me he had no clue any NES game was worth that amount even though his garage was full of games from every system and he had a 1-UP mushroom tattoo on his wrist.I was amazed and horrified at the same time so I did what any of us would do, search the rest of the sale and try to salvage the trip. I managed to find about $300 worth of good games for $80 so the trip was not completely wasted. If any of you here were the lucky bastard that sniped me, I would love to know. I will FOE you, poke needles in your voodoo doll and curse your name forever. Just kidding, congratulations on your awesome find if you are on here. I really would like to know if someone on here got this so I can congratulate you and discuss this fateful night, you sorry bastard!!!

I almost forgot to add the agreed on shipped price. I told the person I would pay them $30 via PayPal for the game, shipping and their time for working with me. They were happy to sell me "1 game" for that price.

^ Damn if you got that for $30 that would be insane. At least the guy who pulled the rug out from under you feet had to shell out $2,000 for it.

Yeah, I will just have to call sour grapes on this one. Oh, to this day I have not told my wife about my "extra day gone for work trip." I still think she would kill me for this (she just does not quite understand).

If I saw someone list the words "Nintendo World Championship" in a Craigslist post I am calling them on the spot with an offer in the thousands. There are a number of people who watch Craigslist like a hawk and run hundreds of searches a day (searching nationwide, not just locally) looking for treasures like this. If you want to compete, you pretty much have to alert the seller to the true nature of the item (to some extent), because someone else will.