This is a picture of my original Atari 2600 and isn't it sweet! It's got the nice orange outline and the puffy E.T. Phone Home sticker. Apparently I was one of the few kids that loved the E.T. game because now it's hated as one of the worst games of all time.
Around 3 weeks ago I was in Boulder, CO on a Saturday morning attending something called a "neighborhood garage sale" but there was nothing really neighberhoodish about it. It was around 8:00AM when their Craigslist post said they were starting but there were only 2 houses selling stuff and I can't even remember what all it was. I think I remember getting 3 hexbugs for $1 and then saying the hell with it and driving off. On the very next block was a woman and her teenaged son bringing board game looking stuff outside which is a cue for me to stop and look.
The first thing I found was a K'nex Screamin Serpent Roller Coaster set. It's a big box which claims to have 2500 pieces and was hella heavy for a K'nex. I asked how much for the K'nex and she said all the games were $5 each. This is obviously not a game but I went with it based on it's piece count and weight.
Sweet! Right next to the K'nex "game" was a Star Wars Lego Mindstorms "game". This box was in excellent condition and it had some good weight to it too so this was obviously going home with me. Neither the Lego Mindstorms or K'nex kits are something to be too terribly exited about but I'm always happy to find cool Lego stuff. Especially Lego Minsdstorms in excellent condition with their original box!
I was enjoying my victorious Mindstorms find when I literally turned around and saw a gigantic tub of Legos. The woman had little gallon sized ziplock bags and was gonna ask $2 per bag of Legos. This was first thing in the morning right as she was bringing all this stuff out of the garage and I know this stuff wouldn't last long. I could also imagine it would only take one clown to spend 30 minutes picking out all of the mini-figures and shoving them all into a $2 bag and then leave everything else behind. This picture doesn't do justice to the amount of Legos that are actually here. I'd estimate that there was 40 pounds of Legos including some manuals. I offered $75 for the entire tub and she accepted. That puts us at $85 spent total on Legos and K'nex stuff.
But there was more! She had 3 ziplocks full of random action figures and a small tub filled with Transformers and Power Rangers stuff. I expressed an interest in all 3 ziplock bags of figures and the tub of toys to go along with everything else. The woman thought about it for a bit and said $15 for all of the toys including the Mindstorms and K'nex stuff. I was happy enough to just give her $100 for everything and call it even.
I was now on my way back to the car wondering if I should get more cash for the garage sales I was heading to next. I heard the woman say to her son "Go get the Atari stuff" which perked my ears. I walked back to her driveway and saw her son walking out with an Atari Game Center box and a second box full of cartridge boxes and game manuals. I took a look inside of the Atari Game Center box and found a Darth Vader style 2600 console along with joysticks, 3 paddles, and another 30 or so games. Inside of the second box was around 40 game manuals and around 10 game boxes. I asked how much and she said $20 for all of it. I gladly paid my money and was off to the next stop.
My wife and I connected the Atari later that night and were playing some of the games. Naturally I had to bring out my own personal Atari and games because my games were way cooler than these. We ended up curating our personal collection with most of the manuals from this new collection and a few of the games that we didn't have. My personal collection now has a nice Atari Game Center console containment system and about 20 new games :)
I've gone through and photographed all of the toys. These are all Batman specific figures and most are from the 90's animated series. There are 17 figures here including some random accessories. The Harley Quinn figure seems to have some variant colored accessories that I can't seem to find online.
Here is Metal Head and Donatello. I think Metal Head is from the late 90's and Donatello is from 2002 Playmates.
These are from the Star Wars Unleashed Battle of Kashyyyk Wookie Warriors set. They are pretty cool looking but there isn't much value here. I don't have any personal need to keep them but they won't sell for much either so their future is undetermined.
This is a Knight Camo Batmobile from The New Batman Adventures Animated Series line of 2000. A Bat Plane ejects from the back of the Batmobile and it's kind of cool but it's just not my Batman. I think the dark blue Batman from an earlier pictures goes with this so I'll need to re-snap those pictures to have a proper grouping for when I attempt to flip these on ebay.
Do you remember that year when kids were begging their parents for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers stuff at Xmas time? I think I was a year out of high school when this stuff really blew up. This is a Dinozord Megazord from 1993 I think and is in pretty good condition. He's missing his original weapons and a chest plate but it's still a pretty nice find for being over 20 years old.
I don't know how I feel about this Playskool Transformer. His name is Aerobot and he's pretty awful but maybe this is good for little kids? I'd actually feel pretty guilty if I introduced a child to Transformers at a young age and then had to explain why all of the Transformers in the Walmart toy aisle don't even fucking transform anymore :(
I think this is called a Power Rangers Rescue Lightspeed Megazord but it's only 1 piece and made of plastic. It's cool that it's a robot but it doesn't follow the Voltron school of cool Power Rangers shit so it's going in the sell pile for sure.
I love Transformers and can never get enough of them. This is an assortment of different generations of Transformers that were all in the big toy tub. I don't know the names of all of them off hand but I know the 1st generation Ultra Magnus for sure. He'll be going into my personal collection along with another 1 or 2 but the rest are going on ebay.
Last but not least is the Pokemon Pokedex from Tiger Electronics. This is a cool little electronic catalog of Pokemon and is in nice condition. I'll be selling this one for sure.
I'm very pleased with what came out of the Atari house and hope to make a few bucks on this stuff. The Lego Mindstorms MUST be closely inspected by me to make sure all of the different dark side robots can be assembled and then MAYBE I'll sell it but I'm in no hurry on that one. The giant tub of Legos are gonna sit in my garage for a rainy day and I have no intention of selling them. Those will be added to my already wild collection of Lego bricks and will one day be enjoyed by the nephews when I'm on babysitter duty. The Atari system and the handful of games that weren't added to my personal collection will definitely be sold as will most of the toys. Hopefully the combination of the Atari, the K'nex, and the toys will pay for the $120 I spent here which is being counted against the Flipping Dragoncon challenge. I'll follow up with an overall update on that challenge in the coming days.
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