Won an auction for 5 sealed N64 games, paid, and this is the message I received:

"Mr. Kilgard I am very sorry to tell you that I planned to end this auction at the 12 hr mark, but did not get to it on time. I was hoping for around $100 for the games. I apologize, and you can leave a "bad" mark on my eBay account if you feel you should."

Won it for $40 shipped. And why does PayPal put a freaking hold on money when it is refunded?

Damn, that sucks!

That's ridiculous! What feedback phrase did you leave him?

Someone about 10 minutes away from me was selling a Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 Arcade Cabinet... for $50... FIFTY BUCKS. I e-mailed the guy within an hour of posting and he responded with a picture and told me to give him my phone number and he'd call me. Talked to him on the phone and he said it needed a cap kit (but for $50 who cares?) and the first person with $50 could take it. Got out of work to go claim it until I could pick it up and he's like "LOL I sold it LOL". I died a little inside.

Haven't left feedback yet. I decided to report him. I'm going to wait to leave the feedback until that is resolved.

Just had a bad experience with the Myibay sniping tool. I was interested in a UK Micro Machines plug-thru version, since I'm trying to complete the UK Codemaster's releases. I set the sniping tool for almos 3£ and just waited for the auction to finish. Turned out the game sold for 1.04£ and my bid never showed up...

It's the first time I had problems with Myibay and it sucks.

Had I gotten to Goodwill earlier, I might have intercepted the CIB N64 before they threw it in the dumpster.

At least I fished the console out of the dumpster (and had already bought the controllers inside the store for 3 bucks each).

Went to three different fleas today. Came across a total of sixteen vendors with NES carts.

Know what I found?

NOTHING.

Best item was a Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt. The vendor wanted $30 for it, there was a price sticker on the front label and he wouldn't negotiate.

Five hours wasted. Found an 18-pack of Sharpie markers for $2 and that was the big haul of the day. And it was f-ing cold out too. Not happy at all.

^^^Be careful about those Sharpies. If they're the ones with some asian writing on them (Hong something) and came in a blister pack, they tend to leak.

No Asian writing but they did come in a blister pak. I'll be careful anyhow. Thanks for the warning.

I had a dream last night I went into a pawn shop, and asked for old NES games. He diverted me to a locked cabinet, opened it up, and there were about 5 carts of caltrons, and 1 myriad (all heavily faded labels).

Then, I woke up

today I allmost bought a $0.50 SNES ac adaptor at a garage sale but i opened my wallet and had no change and this sale was int he middle of an area with no banks.

Edit

that sounds like a Finders Keepers. You didn't really lose out on that deal.

Thats true, newbie fail

this is more venting than missed opportunity. I'm getting really bummed trying looking for good vintage stuff around my town.

case 1: this week is the annual rummage sale for one neighborhood that has expanded to like 300 sales. I've spent the last 2 days after work running from one to the next looking for some retro gaming goodies. I saw and passed on one NES and a bunch of common/junk games, one snes with a handful of sports games, a couple genesis units with a batches of sports games and an n64 with a bunch of sports sports games and a bad stick on the controller. the nes and snes were probably priced fairly but there was nothing of interest. the other stuff was all over priced. I was really looking forward to pulling something awesome out this year but came up empty.

case 2: the local used cd/dvd/game shop moved into a new building and I hate it. this place is well established (they were in the last place at least 10 years) and has the biggest inventory of vintage games in a large area. it's been frustrating dealing with them for several reasons: 

hang in there Lincoln, i havent found anything lately but with spring, comes spring cleaning!

You know, Lincoln, those guys are jerks.  You don't ...ever...throw...away...boxes....period.  The collector's worst enemy are game stores who don't care about boxes.  BuyBacks is the same way sometimes.  Box...gone.  I saw a box for Cherub in the trash can and I asked for it, and they said, "We can't do that.  It's against our corporate policy.  Screw your corporate bull, I want the 150 dollar box.

On a good note...

I went to a store called PlayWorld and payed only 20 dollars apiece for CIB copies of Dragon Warrior III and IV.  HA!  Score!  (Though their both missing dust sleeves and styrofoam.)

The other day I bought a lot of N64 stuff off some dude. It was a pretty standard lot - 9 loose carts, a console, and 3 controllers (green, black, blue), but what attracted me to the lot was that the green controller still had its box. I ended up paying more than the asking price due to a lot of interest but it was okay because I have a really really really hard time tracking down these controller boxes.

When I meet up with the guy, I mention how hard it has been for me to find these controller boxes and how it's pretty much the only reason I bought the rest of his stuff. He says, "You're kidding! I had the other two boxes but I threw them in the recycling bin before I put up the ad." I was like BAWWWW and I asked him to check if the recycling hadn't gone out yet - unfortunately it did

Hey I saw that ad, too bad about the boxes.

Last week my local library had a book sale. I stopped by to pick up some books, but saw they also had some DOS games there. Strange.

Most of them were elementary school learning software, like Reader Rabbit. Although a few were some awesome games (Lord of the Rings, Wizardry). Some were missing floppy variants. They were all $0.25 - $0.50 each, so I just bought them all (about 10 of them). Got them home and not a single one of the floppy disks would work. They're all shot. That kinda sucks.

Oh well, I would have bought them just for the boxes anyway.

It's too bad the games didn't work. Even still, nice price for the boxes though.

Collector's will pay big money for vintage PC games in the box. Because of the format, most acknowledge the fact that the disks will be corrupt. Still a massive score, especially if that Wizardry is an older title.

My friend in florida said he had a star fox super weekend cart at his store. Been there for awhile. he didnt know it was worth anything, but they had a 50 buck price tag on it. I told him since he was already off to go snag that tomorrow and id give him a 100 just for his trouble. He agreed. he went the next day, and couldnt find it. He asked his manager..He said that he put it on ebay a few weeks prior, and already sold it.

Ughh FML

they might not be shot. it could be your floppy reader is calibrated differently than the disks. My recommendation is that you find a local retro computer club and ask if they could check out the disks on an older floppy drive. That's a big reason why floppy disappeared is because the slightest tweak in calibration would make reading other floppy disks that were already formatted impossible to read unless you reformatted them. I bet they're still good.