Sales
Yard Finds - XIII
-David, webmaster DVGI
Sales
Yard Finds - XIII
-David, webmaster DVGI
It's been over a year since I've written this column and I have missed it. I was gone throughout most of the summer so there weren't many trips to the Sales Yard. The ones that were made didn't turn up much at all. Sure, there were a few good trips last Spring but I simply didn't have the time or desire to sit down and document them. With the Summer once again fading into the past, I figured I'd give the old Sales Yard one more run to see what might turn up. It had rained pretty heavily the weekend before so I had hopes that people would be scared into dumping their goods as the end of the selling season was fast approaching. Sadly, this was not the case. For the most part there really wasn't much out there but I was able to grab a couple items for a little bit of money.
The first thing I saw was one of those Power Joy III bootleg Famicom consoles built into a knock-off Nintendo 64 controller. It looked alright and the seller wanted five dollars, so I bought it. When I got home it would not power on. I spent about an hour messing with it before tossing it in the garbage. That's the third or fourth one of these I've purchased and to date NONE of them have worked. Think I would have learned my lesson by now. Aside from that I didn't see much else until I came to the second of the large scale junk dealers that drop things for low prices. Among the boxes of worthless junk I found a copy of Pac-Man for the Atari Computers. It looked to be in okay condition (really hard to find a beat up one of these, the cases are metal) and the seller wanted a dollar for it. That's what it's worth and I don't have a copy so I paid it. Works fine and after a quick clean up into the case with the other cartridges it went.
On the way out I looked around some of the things an electronics dealer hauls out ever week. He's horribly overpriced but I have bought a few things from him here and there. I saw a small Genesis controller and flipped it over to notice that it was the controller for the Mega LD LaserActive module. I think I've seen this controller in the seller's wares before but never thought anything about it. LaserActive stuff is pretty hard to come by and he said it was $5. Alright, that's fine, so I got it.
Basically the LaserActive was a Laserdisc player that could also run special content software as well as accept different modules. One of these was called the Mega LD module and it added Sega Genesis / Mega Drive and Sega CD support. The controller was bundled with this module. It's basically a Genesis six button pad with Pioneer and LaserActive branding as well as some extra text over the A, B, and C buttons. I needed a little cleaning but it works great and for five bucks I couldn't pass it up. I'm not going to keep it as I don't need it, so it's been put away into storage until someone is looking for one. If anyone reading this is interested in acquiring it, please e-mail me.
The very last seller in the front row had a couple small storage containers laid out in front of his junk. For awhile now I've been looking for a way to better store my video game small parts inventory. One of the containers had 15 drawers, the other twice as many but it was pretty beat up. The seller came running over saying I could take them both for a dollar. I told him I only wanted the smaller one but paid him a dollar anyway. It took awhile to clean up but it came out pretty nice. There's a little rust at the bottom but it's no big deal.
The metal construction makes it sturdy enough that I can move it around and not worry about it getting brushed off the workbench. The drawers are perfect for storing my small parts I used for controller repairs as well as a few other things.
Yeah, it's no where near how large my parts inventory used to be but keep in mind this is the small stuff. I've completed a lot of repairs over the past few months so the amount of parts I have is fewer and fewer. This brings up the question "what part is worn out the most in NES controllers?" The answer - the select / start elastomer, as is evident by how few of them I have currently.
Not a great day but I didn't spend all that much and found what I was looking for. Now only if those damn Famiclones I buy would ever work.
Acquired...
Atari Home Computers - Pac-Man (loose)
GEN - Pioneer LaserActive Mega LD Control
Pad (loose)
Sold...
None
Written on 10-07-06 by David, insanedavid@classicplastic.net