Rifts RPG Collection from Craigslist

Garage sales and swap meets are non existent during the winter months. Yes there are a few garage or estate sales on the weekends and yes there is the Capitol Flea Market in San Jose and the Solano Swap Meet in Concord but they get old at times. Craigslist makes it possible to acquire some nice nerdy stuff for a great price with little effort from the comfort of your own home. I look for small collections of stuff that I can easily sell or trade for other stuff. Collections can typically be found for discounted prices on Craigslist by people that are just trying to downsize. There is a fair amount of people trying to sell stuff at retail prices on the site but you can easily identify and avoid them. Some of my favorite stuff to hoard from Craigslist are RPG books and games.

I recently found a gentleman who had a lot of 50 Rifts books. Rifts is an RPG system developed by Palladium Books in the 1990's. Many Rift books have been published by Palladium in the years since. It's not the most popular RPG system anymore but I'm still happy to buy the books since they can be found for a low price and turned around for a decent profit if you have enough of them. There is some pretty fierce competition on Craigslist when it comes to RPG stuff so I quickly emailed this gentleman as soon as I saw his posting. Luckily I was the first person to respond and so I drove out to his place and picked up these 50 books. It turns out that it was the first 40 issues of Rifter magazine and then another 10 or so other Rifts books. Heroes Unlimited, Robotech, and a couple others.

Model Kits, Board Games and Other Random Nerd Loot

I have a fairly broad collection of fandoms that I enjoy spending my time with. Some of these include Transformers, Star Wars, GI Joe, Battlestar Galactica, Alien, video games, board games, long cancelled TV shows, baseball, going to sci-fi/fantasy conventions, movies, electronic gadgets, kickstarters, etc... None of this comes cheap and so I'm always on the lookout for stuff to turn a profit on. You don't need to be an expert in all fandoms in order to recognize a good find at the swap meet or garage sale. Chances are that you have solid knowledge over your own interests and can carry that over to other things. I don't love The Walking Dead but I would stop dead in my tracks if I saw one of the early first printing comics out in the wild for a low price. It's just the kind of general knowledge that a collector of nerdy stuff knows. We know about fandoms outside our own and we can all potentially profit from it.

Bashki Lord Of The Rings Recall Game

A couple weeks ago on my Saturday garage sale trip I found a few items that appeal to some collectors but not necessarily me. I've learned over time that model kits are still highly sought after by collectors. Some of the vintage models are really hard to find nowadays. I picked up this Egyptian Pharoah's Palace model kit, some Greek minis, and the Peterbilt Wrecker kit at an estate sale. This same estate sale also got me a 1970's era Lord of the Rings Recall Game by Milton Bradley. The Lord of the Rings game goes directly into my personal collection of LOTR stuff but the models will go on Ebay and hopefully pay for one night at a Dragoncon host hotel.

I love board games but strategy war games aren't my thing. My fairly basic knowledge of board games has taught me that the old Avalon Hill and SPI strategy war games are sought after. I found this New World game at a garage sale for a couple bucks and now I'll try to flip it.

Finally I like RPG video games but the fighter games like Street Fighter don't appeal much to me. I know that some people love the fighter games and so I recognized this Street Fighter IV themed game stick as a thing and picked it up from an estate sale for 20 bucks. I plan to resell it hopefully for twice the price.

I'm just trying to say that you shouldn't overlook the treasures you might otherwise glance over because they aren't your thing. They might be someone else's thing and you can profit from general nerd collecting knowledge. Then you can go buy yourself something fun!