2018 Garage Sale recap
Outside of 2018 I did a great job of reporting back what I found at yard sales. Although I didn't write much on this particular topic in 2018-2020 I did have some luck. Here is a look back in 2018 at a few of the interesting things I found yard saleing.
By early March of last year the weather was good and yard sales were happening. I had my first really interesting find in early April. I went to a friday sale that advertised Sega Nintendo, Xbox, Super Nintendo and N64 stuff. They didn't have pics but the add but they mentioned video games and systems. When I arrived a few mins late to the sale, I saw two larger, neckbearded individuals arguing over a boxes of Gamecube and Sega Genesis games. Each box also had a system, from what I could see the games were complete in box. I could barely see the GameCube but it looked like Mario Party, Windwaker, Mario Kart and some other decent games were in the box. In the Genesis box I spied an Enforcer, a boxed Model 2 system, lots of CIB games including at least one Phantasy Star.
One of the neckbeards yelled at the other guy that he wanted to buy it for his kids. The other neckbeard conceded and they left. While they were paying I noticed a box on the table amongst a Wii and OG Xbox bundle that said N64 for $80, I opened it up and say a system with good controllers, Majora's Mask, Mario Kart, Mario 64, 007, Perfect Dark and several other games. I promptly paid for this and left, I did ask the lady about the NES and the SNES and she said someone had contacted her the night before and was at the 8am sale at 6:30 am in the morning.
The very next weekend I went to sale in a part of town I don’t normally go to. There was no one else there and the sale advertised Sega and Atari games. The guy said he used to be big into gaming but things had changed and he was cleaning out his storage unit. He had a few Master Systems, a few N64 systems included one that was painted, lots of OG Xbox games, boxed Genesis games, stacks of Atari games, and other misc stuff. While I was there I snagged a handful of OG Xbox games such as Def Jam Fight for NY, Tony Hawk 3 and a few others. I picked up a few 360 games I could use to bundle with a system I had picked up recently. I also snagged the non painted N64 with a few games and handful of complete in box Genesis games for a close friend which included Altered Beast, Klax, Cyberball, 688 Attack Sub, Marble Madness, and Burning Force all for $16.
While the rest of the year had mostly uneventful yard sale pickups there were a few other sales that come to mind. One was in May, I went to an estate sale advertising games and nerd collectibles. This was another sale I showed up late too as a result of a bad address. When I got there, there was a large amount of people carrying out DnD swag, action figures, PC games, Star Trek standees, and misc other stuff. The house was packed with stuff, old PC gaming equipment from the 90s, boxed PC games, boxed commodore 64 games, i saw lots of people scanning items with their phones and pricing checking. I grabbed a box and started to walk around. I managed to snag a few good items for myself and others, spend $80 on Friday and i went back on Saturday and spent another $8. Some of the games i picked up included The Dig from Lucasart, Monkey Island 2 and Secret of Monkey Island, a sealed copy of Gabriel Knight Sins of our Fathers, Shards of Spring for C-64, Secret of the Silver Blades for C-64 (it was sealed) and a handful of other games.
Every June I always go to the Lake Tapps sale in Western Wa its on an island with some expensive homes in the past I have found plenty of good items. This year I found plenty of stuff, misc PS2 RPGs, two copies of the Simpsons game for PS3, plenty of good Wii games and a cheap GC system which was $5.
There were two other big finds this summer, one was at an estate sale close to my house at the end of June. I went to an estate sale that had a little video game stuff. Pics showed there was a DS phat bundle with Tetris, New Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart and Mario 64 DS, She wanted $75 for the whole bundle. When I got there she still had it, I have been pretty lucky at estate sales. I noticed the DS Phat had a cracked screen and bad hinges. I asked if I could buy a few of the games and the lady running the sale said sure how does $5 sound, I got the 4 games listed above for $20.
The last bit of good yard sale luck I had was in August and by August it is pretty warm where I live but I still go out and see what I can find. This was at a guys house who buys storage units. The description of the sale usually involves Mega or Massive and new stuff every day. A buddy and I had gone to his house for previous sales and this guy has video games and he lets them go dirt cheap. But this is the kind of sale you need to wear gloves and maybe take a pole to dig through the bins. I poked around and saw some PS2 games, misc PS2 games and some DC games. I managed to find a cd case with some DC games and some PS1 games marked $5, I saw Code Veronica, Mortal Kombat Gold, Jet Grind Radio and a few other common DC games in a cd case and in another bin I found a disc only Sonic Adventure in a CD case. But the icing on the cake was this, I saw what looked like a Game Gear sitting in the bottom of a box. I pulled it out it was kinda dirty and there was a game in the back. I was thinking it was Sonic, I pulled it out and it was Mega Man for GG. I knew it was crazy good find, all that stuff cost me $15.
Overall 2018 Garage sale season was pretty good. I found some pretty interesting items. I passed on a lot of system bundles because I didn't need them at the time. I saw a lot of Wiis, PS2s, and a few 360s.
Hope to see your comments below and look for my summaries of 2019 and 2020 yard saleing