Dom & Liz's Yardsale Adventures

Week 11 [09.20.08]

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:32:00 -0400

Day Total: $6.00
Sales Visited: 39

1 Monster Party (NES, cart only)
1 The Goonies II (NES, cart only)
1 Bandai Golf: Challenge Pebble Beach (NES, cart only)
1 WWF Wrestlemania (NES, cart only)
1 Stack Up (NES, cart only)
1 American Gladiators (NES, cart only)
1 BurgerTime (NES, cart only)
1 Duck Hunt (NES, cart only)
1 Pinbot (NES, cart only)
1 Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt (NES, cart only)
1 Super Mario Bros 2 (NES, cart only)
1 Gauntlet (NES, cart only)
1 Skull & Crossbones (NES, cart only)
2 Batman (NES, carts + 1 sleeve)
1 Spot (NES, cart only)
2 Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES carts + 1 manual)
1 Nintendo World Cup (NES, cart only)
1 Magic of Scheherazade (NES, cart only)
1 Star Tropics (NES, cart only)
1 Super Mario Bros. (NES, cart + manual)
1 Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (NES, cart only)
1 Jeopardy! (NES, cart only)
1 The Adventure of Link (NES, cart + case)
1 Double Dragon III (NES, cart + case)
1 Dr. Mario (NES, cart only)
1 Clash at Demonhead (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 Kickle Cubicle (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 Wheel of Fortune (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 Little League Baseball Championship Series (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 Final Fantasy (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 Dragon Warrior (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 A Nightmare on Elm Street (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 Tetris (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 Donkey Kong Classics (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 Q*bert (NES, cart + sleeve)
1 Megaman 6 (NES, cart + manual + sleeve)
1 The Legend of Zelda (NES, cart + 2 manuals + case)
1 Gyromite (NES, cart only)
1 Baseball (NES, cart only)
1 Championship Pool (NES, cart only)
1 Game Genie (NES, cart only)
1 Spy Hunter manual
Paid: $5.00

1 Virtua Fighter (32X, cart only)
1 Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GB, cart only)
Paid: $1.00

1 Donkey Kong Country Exposed (VHS)
Paid: FREE

Our town held its biannual townwide yardsale, so we decided to venture out, knowing this would probably be the last chance we'd have this season.

The NES score came at one of the last sales of the day. The son, who was about our age, said he had N64 and NES games when we asked, and we said we were interested in anything he had. He only brought out the NES games, which we were glad of. We've picked up a lot of N64 games, and are really more interested in NES stuff. Anyway, we offered $5 for everything. He was hesitating, and sort of countered with $10. We stuck to the $5 offer and finally he said ok. In the car, we took a quick look over everything and saw a good chunk of titles we didn't own yet, which made the score even better. And the per game breakdown worked out to be 12 cents!

We scored the Donkey Kong Country video at the second sale of the day. We had asked the woman running the sale if she had any games, which she apologized and said she didn't. As we were walking back to the car, she called after us and came down her driveway with the video. She said she just saw this and thought we might be interested in it. She said we could just take it, and handed it to us. We thanked her and wished her luck for the rest of the day. Back in our old haunts, that would have never happened. The plus with the video was Liz had it back in the day - it was a preorder bonus for Donkey Kong Country - which at one point was donated or given away. It's always nice when things come back again. This happened back in 2006 with the free Nintendo Power magazines.

We had a fun morning and it was nice to be out yardsaling again, especially that we didn't come home empty-handed! Now the plan is to start getting our game room going. We'll probably start sometime in January (once we get through the wedding, honeymoon, and holiday season).

We're not dead!

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:59:00 -0400

It's been almost TWO months since we've last updated. Wow!

First, let us assure you that we are both alive and well. Our passion for videogame hunting is as strong as it's ever been, but unfortunately, there have been many roadblocks that have made yardsaling difficult lately.

- Gas prices. We don't include the cost of gas in our finds, because we have always considered that to be a "cost of doing business". That being said, the cost of doing business has doubled since last year! We usually go through 1/3 of a tank per yardsaling session, and that's really been starting to add up this year.

- New house! You may have noticed the absence of reddish/orangish/pinkish carpet as a background in our pictures lately, and that's because we just moved into our new (first!) house at the end of April. There has been a lot to do around here, which takes time and energy away from other things. We're loving it though!

- New town. We no longer live in our old stomping grounds, which we knew like the back of our hand. We have a whole bunch of new towns to learn, and everything is a lot more rural and spread out around here than back home.

- Fewer sales. We don't know what the cause is, but there are noticeably fewer sales out here than we're used to. Even if we took into account ALL of the surrounding towns within a 45 minute driving radius, we still wouldn't find as many sales as we used to. We're hoping that this is more of a result of the bad economy and high gas prices, but we'll see how this improves in the coming years.

- Getting married! After seven wonderful years together, Dom + Liz are getting married! We're tying the knot in October, and then spending a two-week honeymoon in Japan. You can bet that we're going to buy lots of fun things over there, and that we'll put tons of pictures up here! This also means that a lot of time and energy has been going into planning everything.

None of these things is individually enough to keep us from yardsaling, but all together, you can see how we've been having an unusually busy summer. We've been itching to get out there, but unfortunately with everything going on, it's been very difficult. Thank you for your emails and comments inquiring to our whereabouts. We're not sure what the autumn months may bring in terms of having time to yardsale, but stay tuned! At the very least, we will definitely be back in full swing in 2009.

Thank you all for your continued support! We're still going to have lots of fun things coming your way, and I encourage you to keep checking back. We can't wait for our Japan trip, and we also can't wait to set up our Room of Doom! Have you wanted to see all of our yardsale finds together, set up into one massive collection? Soon, you will be able to. We have the perfect room for it, we just need to find time to set everything up.

Make sure to try out Dom + Liz's Visual Route Planner in your yardsaling planning! We custom-made it to fit our own yardsaling needs, and we hope that it can save you as much time as it does for us.

I hope all of you will continue the yardsaling tradition in our temporary absence. If you haven't gone out yet, try it! You may just find that diamond in the rough, and then you'll have a story for a lifetime.

-Dom + Liz

Week 10 [06.21.08]

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:10:00 -0400

Day Total: $9.50
Sales Visited: 31

1 N64 console (w/ power adapter, AV cables, expansion pack)
1 N64 controller
1 Star Wars Shadows of the Empire (N64, cart only)
1 Pokemon Stadium (N64, cart only)
1 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (N64, cart only)
1 Super Mario 64 (N64, cart only)
1 Paper Mario (N64, cart only)
1 Donkey Kong 64 (N64, cart only)
1 WCW nWo (N64, cart only)
1 Bomber Man 64 The Second Attack (N64, cart only)
1 Madden 2001 (N64, cart only)
1 Major League Baseball with Ken Griffey Jr. (N64, cart only)
Paid: $3.00

1 Rainbow Brite Lunchbox (w/ thermos)
1 Care Bears plate (1983)
1 Rainbow Brite 10" doll (vintage 1983, missing Twink)
1 Patty O Green 10" doll (vintage 1983, missing Lucky)
1 Starlite doll (vintage 1983)
1 silk art print
Paid: $2.25

1 Game Boy Color
1 Pokemon Silver (GBC, cart only)
1 Genesis controller
1 Lion King (GEN, cart only)
1 antique "french roll" cast iron muffin pan
Paid: $1.00

1 Sonic plush
1 Treecko beanie plush
Paid: $0.25

1 large suitcase
Paid: $3.00

It rained off an on all week, but fortunately today was hot and sunny.

We got a few "A bunch of people asked about videogames" responses today, but luckily no misses. Interested to know who would be asking - people our age, parents, little kids? We're a little worried that we have some competition, especially where it's a smallish town.

We are always looking out for 80's stuff, so it was great to finally find some original Rainbow Brite dolls. The woman at this sale had kids who grew up in the 80's, so it was nice to see something from that era, rather than the usual Dora the Explorer stuff we usually see. When we asked about videogames, she said they had just sold some Genesis stuff a month before at a school sale.

Some of you may be puzzled why we are buying antique muffin pans. Liz used to vacation in a place that made muffins daily with these pans, and we've never seen them in the field. Amazingly, we found 2 within a few weeks of each other. The muffins come out really really good using these pans, so now we can make our own!

The suitcase may also seem out of place. Now that we own a house, we have to buy anything that we need. Before when we went on vacation, we would just use our parents' luggage. Because we are going on vacation soon, the goal today was to find a suitcase. We never really pay attention to how often suitcases show up at yardsales, but at the second sale we hit, there were tons of suitcases and trunks for sale. It's funny how it worked out perfectly!

We've been noticing over the last couple years that we see more and more N64 and less of everything that came out before (NES, SNES, Gen, etc). It really seems like we're in the N64 hey-day for yardsales. It'll be sad when we reach the day that PS2, GameCube, and XBox is all we find at a yardsale, which of course is inevitable.

Week 9 [06.14.08] + [06.15.08]

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Day Total: $1.00
Sales Visited: 24

Assorted Fantasy books
Paid: $1.00

1 Major League Baseball feat. Ken Griffey Jr. (N64, cart only)
1 Madden 2000 (N64, cart only)
1 NBA In the Zone '99 (N64, cart only)
1 WWF No Mercy (N64, cart only)
1 Mario Kart 64 (N64, cart only)
1 Fox Sports College Hoops '99 (N64, cart only)
1 NBA Jam 2000 (N64, cart only)
1 Super Smash Bros. (N64, cart only)
1 NHL Breakaway '98 (N64, cart only)
1 Mystical Ninja (N64, cart only)
1 NBA In the Zone '98 (N64, cart only)
1 Pokemon Stadium (N64, cart only)
1 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (N64, cart only)
1 Toy Story 2 (N64, cart only)
Paid: FREE

[06-14-2008]
The weather was great, but no deals to be had. Picked up the books at one of the first sales of the day, so the rest of the day dragged. There were only a few videogame sightings.

Our first videogame sighting was pretty late - around 10:45am. A NES, Genesis, and PS1 and a box of NES, Gen, and PS1 games. Everything was encrusted with dirt and grime, and of course, way overpriced. The NES was $10, the other 2 systems weren't marked but we could imagine the price. The box of games were unmarked so we asked how much they were. She immediately snapped back "$2 each", then went on to say, "5 people have asked me how much the games were I should probably put a price tag". Then, made no move to do so. 5 people have asked and it was obvious no one had bought any of the games. We didn't even bother to haggle. The games were mostly commons, things we had, and we could tell by her attitude that she wasn't going to bargain with us.

The very next sale, another bitch. She had a ton of junk, lots of things like buttons and sequins and rusted old tools and wires. She had a large wood platform that was the "dollar table" with more junk, and a Game Boy carrying case. We inquired if she had any games, and she responded that she had an XBox. We weren't interested, so we asked if she'd take a quarter for the carrying case (we pick these up for a quarter all the time). She flat out said "no". We said "ok", put the case back, and started to walk away. She then added, "Everything on that table is $1". We said, "Well, we thought we'd try". Rolling our eyes, we left. Two bitches in a row.

A few sales later, we saw a PS2 slim and 3 bargain bin games for $50, which was advertised in their ad. We passed, and as we were leaving a guy around our age walked up to the sale. We typically don't see anyone else our age yardsaling, so we looked to see where he'd go. He walked right over to the PS2, and by the time we had turned around the car to head to the next sale, he was walking away with the bundle. Not sure if he's competition. There was one sale earlier where they had sold an Atari bundle, but anyone could have bought it. We'll have to see what happens.

Hopefully next week will be better.

[06-15-2008]
Quick Freecycle pick-up. 14 N64 games, posted last night at 6:30PM. Didn't see until this morning and quickly sent over an email asking if they were still available. She responded that they were and we headed over. Woman was very nice, said that she was still cleaning out her attic and that there might be more games. She said she saved our email and would let us know if she finds anything else!

Week 8 [06.07.08]

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:49:00 -0400

Day Total: $8.00
Sales Visited: 21

1 PS2 console (w/ power adapter and A/V cable)
1 Madden '07 (PS2, disc only)
Paid: $1.00

2 GBA SP (w/ 1 charger)
Paid: $5.00

1 Lightning Force (GEN, complete)
1 Sandisk card reader
Paid: $0.50

1 Shining in the Darkness (GEN, cart + case)
Paid: $0.25

1 Sim City 4 (PC, complete)
Paid: $0.25

1 antique "french roll" cast iron muffin pan
Paid: $1.00

The hottest day of the year - well into the 90's - yielded a handful of small purchases.

The PS2 was marked $5, and the seller told us he wasn't sure if it worked. His kids had it at college and then when they moved back home, they "abandoned" it. We offered $1, saying we'd take a chance, which he accepted. Once home, we performed "the test" - PS2 cd-rom, PS2 dvd, PS1, and DVD - and everything worked perfectly fine! Definitely worth the dollar gamble!

We never owned a GBA SP, and the few we've seen in the field were either too expensive or badly beat-up. These were in good shape all-around, asking $5 each. We offered $5 for both which the seller quickly accepted. They both work great.

One sale we went to was rather interesting in terms of setup. It was on a farm, and the yard sale was along the driveway, which was somewhat long and had a grass divider down the middle. The sale was penned off with small wood poles and rope, with an opening to walk into each section. Each section was marked 25 cents, 50 cents, etc. up to $5 and $10. The front of the sale had the most "expensive" items, and as you walked up the driveway, the sections became cheaper. Right at the front of the sale was a Genesis with 4 games marked $50. Yeah right. For the hell of it, we grabbed Shining in the Darkness, a game we didn't own, and offered a quarter on it. To our surprise, the seller took it with no hesitation. Sometimes making an offer on something overpriced works, though usually it doesn't...

Near the end of the day, we happened upon a sale that was charging $4 per DVD, which was a red flag right off the bat. Near the DVDs was a box full of PS1 games, not priced. Upon inspection, it was mostly common stuff. The only one that was of any interest was Bushido Blade. Since there were no prices, we offered a quarter. The seller called his wife over and she flatly said "No, the games are $3 each". We then offered 50 cents, she again responded "No." We said we could do a dollar. She said "No". We said, "You're going to stay firm at $3 at 12 o'clock?" She didn't respond but the husband answered, "I guess so." No wonder they had full boxes of DVDs and the PS1 games.

The cast iron muffin pan has a personal and sentimental value, and the muffins come out so delicious!

Hit a local flea market after yardsaling, and were not surprised to find it as typical as flea markets get. The usual videogame vendors were present and accounted for, complete with overpriced common games in terrible shape. There was also a snack hut that had the standard burgers and fries, chinese food, and even korean food.

All in all it was a good day, and you couldn't ask for better weather.

Week 7 [05.31.08]

Sat, 31 May 2008 11:21:00 -0400

Day Total: $4.50
Sales Visited: 10

1 Super Smash Bros. (N64, cart only)
1 Pokemon Puzzle League (N64, cart only)
1 Hey You! Pikachu (N64, cart only)
1 Star Wars Rogue Squadron (N64, cart only)
1 Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64, cart only)
1 Star Fox 64 (N64, cart only)
1 Toy Story 2 (N64, cart only)
1 Pokemon Stadium (N64, cart only)
1 Pokemon Snap (N64, cart only)
1 WWF War Zone (N64, cart only)
1 Secret Codes 2008 Vol. I guide
Paid: $3.00

1 Super Mario Advance 4: SMB3 (GBA, cart only)
1 Game & Watch Gallery 4 (GBA, cart only)
1 Mario vs. Donkey Kong (GBA, cart only)
1 Mario Tennis (GBC, cart only)
Paid: $1.50

Short day. The weather appeared to be promising, but it quickly (and unexpectedly!) turned into a heavy downpour.

Both of these purchases came from neighboring houses that were part of a street sale. The first house had several GBA, GBC, and XBox games. He was asking 75 cents each for the GBA and GBC games. We picked out 4 and CIF'd $1. The seller responded with "How about $1.50?" Of course, we agreed!

Next door, the seller was asking 50 cents each for the N64 games. We tried $2 for the lot, but he refused. We then tried $3 and he hesitated for a bit, then finally said ok. There were some rather beat-up guides for GameCube that he wouldn't include because they "didn't go with" the games we bought. No big loss.

At least today wasn't a total washout!

Week 6 [05.24.08]

Sat, 24 May 2008 15:17:00 -0400

Day Total: $8.50
Sales Visited: 12

1 Dreamcast console (w/ power and A/V cables)
2 DC controllers (white/black)
1 Blue VMU
1 Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (DC, complete)
1 NFL Blitz 2000 (DC, complete)
1 NFL 2001 (DC, complete)
1 Trick Style (DC, disc + case)
1 NHL 2K (DC, disc + case)
1 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (DC, disc + case)
1 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (DC, disc + case)
1 World Series Baseball 2K1 (DC, complete)
1 NBA 2K (DC, complete)
1 Dynamite Cop (DC, disc only)
1 WWF: Road to Wrestlemania (GBA, cart only)
1 Sega Sports cushion
Paid: $3.25

1 GameCube console (w/ power adapter)
2 GameCube controllers
1 GC memory card
1 Animal Crossing (disc only)
Paid: $5.00

1 Game Boy carrying case
Paid: $0.25

Assorted empty PS2 cases, manuals, and demo (no games)
Paid: FREE

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 made a mediocre day a little sweeter.

We came upon this particular sale near the beginning of the day. We found the Sega Sports cushion and inquired if they had any other games. The woman at the sale was actually the sister of the seller, who had run out to get some coffee. We waited for nearly 10 minutes, then decided to go, but left our name and number. We paid 25 cents for the cushion and were on our way.

The seller called back a half hour later saying she had videogames out and that her sister must have not known they were there. It was a rather small sale and while we were waiting, we looked at everything and there were definitely no video games. We asked what she had and if she could tell us what games. She told us that she had about 10 games, and amidst all of the sports crap, there was a gem: MvC2. We asked how much she was looking to get, and she said $10 for the whole bundle, which isn't too bad at all. We thanked her and said we'd be back later.

So after scoping out the other sales and taking care of an errand, we headed back. The sister recognized us walking up and waved the seller over, who brought out a duffel bag filled with the Dreamcast stuff. We asked if she'd take $3 for everything, to which she replied incredulously, "Only 3!?" We were about to switch into haggle mode when she laughed and said, "Sure that's fine!" Sometimes you can't tell when people are joking or serious! But what made the deal extra sweet was that of all the games, MvC2 was completely mint, while all the others were beat up, scratched, and had cracked cases. We wondered if maybe the kids just never played MvC2 and were always playing their sports games, thus those were more worn.

We offered $5 on the GameCube, which was marked $20. We should've gone a bit lower, using the lack of A/V cables as a haggling point, but mistakes happen.

Nothing else to report. There weren't many sales going on, but that could be attributed to the long holiday weekend. At least the weather was great!