Sales
Yard Finds - IV
-David, webmaster DVGI
Sales
Yard Finds - IV
-David, webmaster DVGI
Surprisingly enough this last Tuesday didn't carry any rain with it, quite the contrary the sun was out and it actually broke 50 degrees for the first time in a few weeks. Having nothing more to sell I figured a trip out to the Sales Yard may at least yield some bargains as this is really the last good selling week of the season - things don't pick up again until May.
Most of the sellers were out in full force but disappointingly no one was really cutting deals. There were a few stray NES decks I was looking it, no accessories and the cases were pretty badly scratched up, so I was hoping to grab them for maybe five bucks for the pair. Nope, ten dollars for each, although I did get the seller down to ten for both it would just cost too much to get them in operating sellable condition. A far cry from the complete NES, sans AC adapter, I picked up for three bucks last week.
I came upon some NES cartridges at the
magical price of three dollars each, two for five. Remember now,
I build up my game archives on the cheap, that's a big part of game archival
to me. So I dug through their cartridges and picked up Dr. Mario
and Stanley The Search For Dr. Livingston, two games that are hard to find
around here, both in excellent condition. (this brings my NES cartridge
total up to 215) It was starting to look like that was going to be
it for the big bargain trip out to the Sales Yard until I was going through
the rogue electronics junk of a seller at the end and came 
across
the analog paddle controller for Arkanoid. Arkanoid is basically
Breakout on steroids. Nintendo released their own version of Arkanoid
on the GameBoy called Alleyway (it was actually a launch title) but when
Taito ported the arcade classic Arkanoid over to the NES they included
a traditional paddle controller in the box. It's roughly the size
of an NES controller turned on end and has a ball serve button and a dial
to provide precise control to your Arkanoid ship (paddle) in the game.
It also has a covered sensitivity adjustment control but rarely does that
ever need to be messed with. The lady obviously didn't know what
she had since she mumbled "..two dollar" and that was that. Unfortunately
I don't have an Arkanoid cartridge to test the performance of the controller
but I'll be picking one up soon enough. Upon inspection of the inside
of the controller everything looks fine, the cord does have a few spots
of insulation melt but this was usually caused by storing coiled cords
in a warm environment. Even if the cord itself is bad, it can be
replaced.
That was it for the Sales Yard this time, looked like there might have been nothing there until I came upon the holy grail of licensed third party NES controllers. I plan on hitting the local Gamecrazy after Christmas and going on a low-cost NES cartridge spree so I'll probably have a copy of Arkanoid by then.
Acquired...
NES - Dr. Mario (cartridge only)
NES - Stanley: The Search For Dr. Livingston
(cartridge only)
NES - Taito Arkanoid paddle controller
(loose)
Sold...
None
Written on 12-23-04 by David, insanedavid@classicplastic.net