Garage Sales Finds Week of March 20th
This is part of a new weekly series I will be doing. This series will focus on the great finds and some tips for getting out there and hunting down the best deals. Onward to this week’s plan of attack, I checked Craigslist early Friday and saw a few sales advertising games. I checked Saturday morning as well and saw two more garage sales advertising video games. None of the listing had images of the games they were selling. I could have taken the chance and emailed the person who listed the sale and asked them about what they had. I have done that in the past, but often times it is a hit and miss.
I headed out about 8 AM to the nearest garage sales. The first sale I went to didn't look like it had much from the street. I walked up and saw there was a table in the garage. It had a yellowed SNES system with hookups and two controllers for $10. That is a great price, I immediately picked it up.
I also spotted a pink DS with 10 games for $50, and the sign mentioned each game was $5. All of the games were complete and most of them were commons. I cherry picked New Super Mario Bros, Kirby: Super Star Ultra, and Mario Party DS. When I went up to pay the guy said I could have everything for $20 vs the $25 I thought I was going to pay. Score! I didn't even have to haggle or try Cash-in-Face method. (More on that later).
I put everything in the car and headed to two more sales. It was now about 8:20 am. The other sale I went to was closed, address was right but nothing was there. I headed to the last advertised sale and when I got the seller was setting up. Another potential buyer was there with a smartphone asking about games.
Was this my competition, one of those guys who scans everything with an app and checks Amazon? I really hadn't seen much competition here in the last 7+ years I have been living here. This guy was pushy, I hung back while the the owner of the house brought out boxes of stuff. Most of what she had was common PS1 games and disc only PC games. I let the other guy dig through, she also had two original Xboxes with no hookups. She didn't know if they worked. I didn't want to take a chance with those and have to fix the disc drives. Besides for testing games, adding it to my collection, or soft-modding I don't have a use for the original Xbox and the re-sale value is pretty low. I guess I might have pulled the trigger at $5 apiece for them but not for her asking price of $20 apiece.
Well that is all the finds I have this week. I’ll probably use everything I got for trading fodder. I have a RetroN5 and that feeds my SNES needs. Keep checking back every Monday/Tuesday for these articles. Here is my garage sale tip of the week. Plan your route and make sure you carry small bills.