Not too many stories from this weekend’s yard sale outing. The most interesting find for me was the “Legend of Dragoon Collector’s Video” VHS tape that I found early in the day at a church sale. It has a gatefold cover that folds out with more artwork and screenshots of the game. I don’t know if this was a promo or perhaps a reservation freebie? I can’t find any info about it except that there’s a copy for sale on Half.com for $15. If you know more about it, please leave a comment.

Final Fantasy VII and Guitar Hero III came from a pawn shop on the way home from my ’saling. Needless to say, a $5 copy of FFVII turned a mediocre yard saling day into a great one!

• Legend of Dragoon Collector’s Video VHS — $0.50
• Final Fantasy VII — $5 (pawn shop)
• Resident Evil 2 N64, complete — $3
• Super Mario 64, complete — $3
• UFC Sudden Impact PS2 — $3
• Guitar Hero III PS2 — $12.50 (pawn shop)
• Mega Man X4 PS1, disc only — $1
• Fat DS Mad Catz case — $0.50 (will go well with the $5 fat DS I got a couple of weeks ago)

A few nice yard sale finds today, though nothing too earth-shattering.

The Find of the Day for me was an excellent condition copy of Vandal Hearts for the Playstation. I nearly didn’t stop at this sale because the classified ad listed “glassware, antiques,” etc., which is usually just code for “grandma died and we’re clearing out her house.” This was around 11:30 too, pretty late in the day for 32-bit gems to be just sitting around.

The funniest thing was that this was only game they had (too bad!), and the only other thing I saw that looked like it was made for someone under 40 was a single Spider-Man action figure. Most everything else, was the ad said, was antique.

The asking price was $1 and I happily paid it. This is my first ever copy of Vandal Hearts and it will be staying in the collection for sure. I’ve been on a tactics RPG kick lately, so perhaps I’ll end up playing it someday. (Then, I say that about the other 400 games that I own.) Now just to find Vandal Hearts 2…

Low point of the day: Snobby bitch mom trying to sell PS2 launch titles (those are from 2000, in case you forgot) and Game Boy Color games for $10 each. I held up Zone of the Enders. “This game is $5 at Gamestop.” “Oh no it’s not, I buy games there all the time.” I give up.

• Bust-a-Move, Game Gear, complete and minty — $2
• Pac-Man, Game Gear, complete and minty — $2
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble, Game Gear, complete and minty — $2
• Super Columns, Game Gear, complete and minty — $2 (These all came from the same guy who sold me the complete Genesis games two weeks ago.)
• Star Wars: Dark Forces/Jedi Knight Special Edition, PC — $1
• X-Com: UFO Defense, DOS/PC — $1
• Aladdin, Genesis — $0.50 (Much nostalgia for this one!)
• PS2 demos: Jampack, Dark Cloud 2, War of the Monsters — $0.25 ea
• Resident Evil 4 EGM preview DVD — $0.25
• Playstation 2 Kiosk 2-12 Spring 2004 promo demo — $0.25 (So cool to find these in the wild! I’ve never owned any kiosk demo discs before. All the demos came from a guy who used to work at both Software, Etc. and Wal-Mart.)
• Xbox Wal-Mart Demo Disk Version 2.0 — $0.25 (No idea what’s on here. I thought I might pop it in my 360 to find out, but then I remembered it’s probably not backwards compatible. Anybody know what’s on the disc? Put it in the comments!)Find of the Day:
• Vandal Hearts, PS1, complete — $1

Update 07.30.08: I had a friend pop the Xbox kiosk demo disc into his original Xbox, and here’s what’s on it:

Playable Demo:
NCAA Football 2003
RalliSport Challenge

Video:
Madden NFL 2003
NASCAR Thunder 2003
Prima Strategy Guides
Xbox Live - Play Online!
Xbox Now $199
Blinx: The Time Sweeper
Kakuto Chojin
Kung Fu Chaos
Mech Assault
NBA Inside Drive 2003
NFL Fever 2003
Quantum Redshift
Shenmue II
Sneakers
Whacked!
Xbox.com
Xbox Accessories
ESRB Ratings

Warning:
Microsoft Legal

I had some OK yard sale finds today. Once again, my best find came early in the day — Zelda Collector’s Edition for Gamecube for $3. I found this at around 8:30 (sales start around 8 in this area) at community sale at a car wash. The games belonged to a kid. He had a bin of Gamecube games (mostly kids’ games) marked $5.00 each, but took my $3 offer without hesitation. As I was leaving, he was getting ready to mark the games down from $5 to who knows what, and his mother scolded him, telling him to wait. I thought it was amusing that he was so anxious to sell them after only a half hour.

• Jet black Gamecube, with nice case, 2 controllers, 3 memory cards — $10
• Microsoft Works Suite 2001 — $0.25
• Spryo the Dragon, PS1 — $0.50
• Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi PS1 — $0.50
• Beyond Good and Evil, Xbox — Asking $5, offered $3 (one of the better finds of the day)
• Zelda Collector’s Edition, Gamecube — Asking $5, offered $3
• Pokemon Red (cart only) and Blue (complete) — Asking $7 ea (!), offered $2.50 ea

I just got back from another successful Saturday morning of yard sales.

I was lucky enough to get my very first Sega Saturn today. This is the first one that I’ve seen in the wild at a reasonable price. The seller was asking $5, but I offered him $3, and he took it. (I admit, my definition of “reasonable price” is pretty lowball when it comes to yard saling.) It was pretty dirty and scuffed (photos are after cleaning) but to my surprise, it does, in fact, work. What surprises me most is how quiet it is for such an old CD-ROM system. Heck, my new PSP is noisier than this.

The last Sega Saturn set I saw in the wild was at the same Goodwill where I picked up the Super Famicom (!), though that set was a bit too pricey for me at $50. It had some nice games though — Bust-a-Move 2,  Sonic 3D, etc.

I was wondering why I keep finding copies of Final Fantasy XI at yard sales and Goodwills, and then I remembered Gamestop doesn’t take it for trade-in.

• Sega Saturn, 2 controllers, all hook-ups, with Virtua Fighter 2 and some hockey game that I’m not even going to bother to copy down — asking $5, offered $3
• Final Fantasy XI Xbox 360 — $2 (A Final Fantasy game that I don’t have, at a yard sale. How novel!)
• Vectorman, complete and mint –  $2
• Sonic 3D Blast, complete and mint –$2
• Frogger, Spyro the Dragon, Spyro: Ripto’s Rage, Ape Escape, all minty — $2
• Playstation pre-DualShock Analog Controller SCPH-1180, mint in box — $3 (Some crazies believe that this is the most comfortable Sony controller ever made. The PS1 and Genesis games all came from a guy who told me he had a ton of game stuff, but was eBaying portions of it. He told me he just sold a mint copy of Super Mario RPG for $91 on eBay [link]. I responded with a frustrated “aaahhh!!” Guess I wasn’t going to get any amazing deals from him.)
• Nintendo A/V hookups — $0.75
• TI-83 Plus graphing calculator — asking $5, offered $4 (Easy resale come August/September.)
• PSP charger — $1 (Great for my Crisis Core PSP, since I needed another American cable.)

aaaand the Find of the Day:
• Nintendo DS fatty — $5

Found this at the very first sale of the day. Amusingly, they also had a 1st-gen indigo GBA that they wanted $10 for. Huh? I’m sure the DS would not have lasted long had I not gotten there early. The lady said it worked OK, but she didn’t have the “batteries.” Er. By that, I guess she meant the power cable. I plugged it in immediately once I got home and hit Power. Nothing. I was disappointed as I was sure I had just bought someone’s brick. I kept pressing Power and then I heard the speakers clicking. A few more times, and it powered on. It lives! I guess it needed a minute to charge.

The touch screen is pretty scratched. Does anyone have any suggestions on fixing scratches? If so, leave a comment.

And no, Phoenix Wright wasn’t included.

Today was one of my best ’saling days of the year to date. The weather was perfect — the day started out at 59° at 8 am and only moved up to around 80° for most of the day. (I’m glad sales start at 8 am around here rather than the 6 am in other regions.) Lots more people were out today than recent weeks, but the finds were still good.

I should add that I saw a pretty large number of games today, but nothing rare or desirable. In fact, one sale had a big stack of PSP games ($15 each, ack!), which is probably the first time I’ve seen PSP games at a yard sale. They were mostly puzzle and poker titles.

I haven’t had any good actual game scores lately. I’m praying to the yard sale dieties for a big RPG trove soon.

• NES, complete and working, with Super Mario/Duck Hunt — $12 (not the cheapest NES ever, but these are remarkably easy to flip)
• Jet black Gamecube, complete and working, with Rampage and Naruto and 2 controllers — $15
• 2 pack new DV tapes — $0.25
• a lovely sake set — asking $5, offered $2 (has around 5 cups, but the seller wrapped them up and I didn’t feel like unwrapping them all)
• single NES controller — asking $1, offered $0.50
• Flexible silicone USB keyboard — asking $2, offered $1
• USB mini CompactFlash reader — $0.50 (The above photo is brought to you courtesy of the new reader. It’s especially nifty since my previous CF reader required a power supply, making it not very good for travel.)

  and the Find of the Day:

• 250gb Western Digital Passport portable USB hard drive, new in blister pack — asking $10, offered $5 (Wow! This came at the perfect time, since my laptop is constantly giving me low storage warnings.)

This past weekend was perfect for yard saling here in Maryland. There were tons of sales (partially because of rain the previous Saturday) and I saw next to no other shoppers. It was hot and I think the heat kept people inside. Tomorrow is the annual city festival here and historically the apex of the ’saling season. Good luck to all if you’re headed out bright and early tomorrow.

5.31.08:

The weekend before last was nearly a total washout. I hit just a couple of sales by 8:30, when it started to pour rain. It didn’t stop, and everyone pretty much pulled in the sales for the day and that was that. So the above is only from about the first 30 minutes.

• NES system, complete with Zapper, 5 games, arcade stick, VERY clean — $10
• Road Rash (original) PS1, disc only — $1
• Wooden CD/DVD rack — $3

6.7.08:

As I wrote above, it was definitely a buyers’ market this past Saturday, with tons of sales around town and practically no shoppers out for some strange reason.

• GBA Instruction manualsfor Zelda, Fire Emblem, Castlevania, and Street Fighter Alpha 3 — $0.25 ea
• Final Fantasy X guide — $1
• Plush N64 Mario and Toad — $1 ea
• The Royal Tenenbaums Criterion DVD — $1
• 3 Final Fantasy/RPG issues of Nintendo Power — $0.25 for all
• God of War PS2 — $2
• Batman NES — $0.10
• Steven Spielberg’s “Taken” miniseries screener VHS — $0.25
• Not pictured: junky Movado knock off watch — $1 (threw it away because I couldn’t get the battery cover off); HP ink cartridge NIB — $0.25