Really good/older games found in 2nd hand shops

[watters50]

I have a collection of 73 games that I have found in 2nd hand shops, just to name a few : Battlefield 2, F.E.A.R, Soldier of Fortune 1, two copies of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Doom 3, Civ 4, AoE 1 & 2, Halo 1 & 2 for pc and Half life 1 with expansions, just to name a few.

Has anybody else found anything like this or is it just me?

[syntheticgerbil]

I think it's just you. I've never heard of any games in any kind of shops.

 

Are you a robot?

[Gormongous]

I once found the complete Titan Quest and its expansion for five bucks at Half-Price Books. That was a steal, but not really a find.

[mikemariano]

I compulsively buy used CDs.  About 1,200 CDs into my collection and I've only come across one game accidentally filed with the music: the CD version of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego!

[Zeusthecat]

Can't tell if this thread is a joke or not but most of my collection has come from second hand shops. I have picked up countless classics including Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasies 3 through 9, Punch Out, Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, all Zeldas from NES through SNES, all Donkey Kong Countries, shitloads of Mario games, and at least 100 other games from the Atari to the Dreamcast.

 

So yes, I don't think you are alone in finding this type of stuff in second hand shops.

[Ben X]

I just picked up Knights Of The Old Republic for a quid, and No One Lives Forever for two quid. There are a bunch of charity shops here so I try to do a circuit for bargains regularly. I'll pick up a game if it's either not available online or notably cheaper than it's ever been online according to isthereanydeal.com. Unfortunately, I don't have space in my flat to keep boxes, so I've had to resist getting sweet old boxed copies of stuff like Last Express (I think this was before it was available online, and I'd never played it) because I can't bring myself to chuck the boxes away. Hopefully whoever got that game has it displayed on their mantlepiece.

 

EDIT: my other good finds - Grim Fandango, The Dig, Escape From Monkey Island, Blade Runner, Discworld, Discworld Noir, No One lives Forever 2

[tegan]

I've gotten a bunch of GBA games for three bucks each (Mario World, 3, Kart, etc) and Space Channel Five Part 2 for ten.

[CollegeBaby]

I am in the mid stages of getting dangerously addicted to buying old big box PC games. It started with buying games that I already owned in the past but were lost or damaged in time (Half-Life, Baldur's Gate, Wing Commander). Then it went to games that I had always wanted but never got around to owning (Mech Warrior 2, Ultima Underworld 1 and 2, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter). Now it's getting into a buying multiple versions of the same from different regions because sometimes they have different components or box art and I'm getting more picky with having sealed originals and I have no money for any of this because I'm a college baby!

[pearceshea]

Back a console generation ago, I used to spend a day a month driving from one game store and thrift shop to another, browsing the old games (ps1, ps2 mostly). I got all the SMTs, including the Japanese-only add on for persona 2. Those, plus all the King's Fields were the biggest finds as I actually played those (and obsessively).

And like, the second printing of the original dungeons and dragons, avalon hill's titan, both of the realms of chaos books, and a number of old table top rpgs from back when they were "fantasy role playing" or FRPS rather than "rpgs."

[watters50]

I was just interested as I am from New Zealand so there aren't as many games in circulation to start with, so when I find an older game in a 2nd hand shop it's quite a rare occurrence.

[tegan]

Oh yeah, the best thing I ever found in a second-hand shop was a huge pile of copies of The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition with the "not for resale" notice carefully clipped off. Still have mine.

[sucks2Bme]

I got The Sims for $1 a long time ago. That was about it.

but in my youth i generally only focused on 2-3 games at a time, for long periods.

 

Now, with financial independence, I have become a slave to Steam Sale Hoarderism 

[Spenny]

My best find ever was Earthbound, which I got for 15 dollars and has a value of over 100! I also got FF7 for 8 bucks one time. I have a Steel Battalion controller (missing the pedals, though apparently their circuit would be pretty easy to replicate). Also a model 1 Sega CD, which is a lot sexier than the model 2, and would look even sexier if i had a model 1 Genesis to sit on top of it. 

 

If this were to be considered a general game collecting thread I could probably post some more cool stuff I have. I haven't been collecting much lately because my old apartment was small and I don't have any good thrift stores around.

[Sno]

There's a local store that had this lonely looking copy of Anachronox sitting on its shelves for years and years and years until it finally disappeared just a few years back. The second it wasn't there anymore, i immediately felt bad for not being the one that bought it.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I just found and bought a PS1 era X-Files game complete with actual stills or video of Mulder and Scully solving cases, along with you! Their fellow agent Joe Schlub. Point and click your way through the FMV mysteries to find that truth, that's in there.

 

I have a friend who loves the X-Files so we're planning to crack this open with no prior knowledge of it and revel in the misery of a (presumably) bad licence game.

[Ben X]

I just found and bought a PS1 era X-Files game complete with actual stills or video of Mulder and Scully solving cases, along with you! Their fellow agent Joe Schlub. Point and click your way through the FMV mysteries to find that truth, that's in there.

 

I have a friend who loves the X-Files so we're planning to crack this open with no prior knowledge of it and revel in the misery of a (presumably) bad licence game.

 

You should then send it to Danielle and Sean so they can make it part of their X-Files 'cast.

[Apelsin]

Didn't they make a ResEvil-clone for X-Files as well?

[syntheticgerbil]

Okay fine, I'll do something in this thread. I have a lot of rare crap and all of my games are always complete in box. Besides things long ago where I used to frequent flea markets in Houston where I got most of my older consoles working and super cheap, that was all like 2004-2007 and doesn't necessarily work so well these days in terms of deals as large tubs of equipment aren't very remarkable anymore and most resellers know what stuff is worth. You're never going to find a top loading NES for cheap now.

Probably the best deal out of what I recall was a clear green N64 with controller (which didn't match) for $10, and a 32x with adapter for $5. However, as is usual with every fucking 32x, it was missing the cord and people sell these fucking cords for more than the actual 32x is worth, some people even "making them" and were selling them for $30 or more a pop. The connector was a 8 pin DIN connector but my dad showed me the 32X and Genesis both have 9 open pins. Turns out one pin isn't used and I bought a cheapo very common 9 pin connector from Fry's for about $2 and it worked fine. Looks like the actual 8 pin connector is manufactured by a third party Chinese company now, so the cords are more like $8 now, but you can still buy the 9 pin from Fry's for $5 according to the site.

 

So I play the eBay game and I also resell things I no longer need complete in box if a compilation release comes out, like getting rid of Kirby 64 or Kirby's Dreamland 3. Although with those I kept the manuals since there were no scanned manuals on the disc like the Sonic collections.

 

So a lot of stuff I have found on eBay tends to be deals because I was on it a little bit earlier years ago like:

- I won Snatcher complete for Sega CD for $70 at a time when that was about the going rate. Now it's $250 and up everywhere.

- I  bought Earthbound's cart, guide with cards intact, and a rental box all for under $100 separately.

- I purchased that super rare PC Adventure game U.F.O.s complete from GameTZ, when people used to use that in the late 90s/early 2000s.

- When Sierra was still owned by Havas, I purchased the Space Quest Collection new for $20 when it was on sale from their mail catalog. I remember because I had to mow a few lawns and then pay my dad to order it. That thing was worth a lot for a while but when Activision or whatever rereleased it on DVD, the value died, but it's barebones and missing stuff like the compilation manual with drawings and fun stuff from the original boxes.

- Similar thing with the Ultimate Pleasure Pack for Leisure Suit Larry, it's retained it's value because Activision will never rerelease Larry 7 because of the hidden sex scene (which is really not explicit) despite Al Lowe giving them instructions on how to easily change the code for it and delete the video file from the disc.

 

My most rare eBay win is the Sega CDX, I got rid of this hulking multi adaptor shit:

And turned it into this:

No one really bid because it was untested and it was missing all of the cords. Well I had a set of Genesis A/V cords which work just fine and I found out you could use a multi-connection laptop adapter and set it to the proper 10.5 Volts. Not sure if this particular multi-connection adapter is easy to find anymore since 10.5V is a weird setting and everything is going to USB adapters and there's not much use for this stuff anymore.

 

And I probably have a bunch of other junk that is worth a lot more now just because I am getting old and I just snagged it at the time. Never any rare finds at Half Priced Books or anything like that. At least not significantly rare enough to give me some kind of great deal. Really Half Priced Books checks the value on all of that stuff now anyway and puts it in a locked case if it's valuable.

 

The only time I ever had a deal going on was when I purchased like 30 Mario 3 Advance e-reader cards from Gamestop about 2005 for 1 cent each. I sold them all on eBay a few years later for about $20 a pop, since I already knew they were becoming rare and it seems like only this particular Gamestop in town was trying to unload them. It sucks because I see them go for about $100 now for a sealed pack.

 

Hmm, I also like those repro carts too, especially when people make a manual and box. But there are no deals to be had there. I have Devil World, Earthbound Zero, Mother 3, Famicom Tantei Club for SNES, and BS Zelda. I badly wish I could afford BS Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets right now as I see people have figured out how to make those carts work in terms of the map days with the reset function but they go for about $100. Makes me sad.

[Spenny]

I picked this thing up at a garage sale for about 5 or 10 bucks:

 

Contrary to the thread title, it's a super terrible game. I feel bad for kids who owned it.

 

Here's a photo of my game shelf: