Hey all! Welcome to another thrift adventure! It’s been a while since I’ve covered a thrift blog so it feels good to get back to old favorites! Sadly, it feels like the spoils are fewer and farther between nowadays. Between the rise in resellers, the rise in thrift store prices, and the rise of thrifting in popularity, I certainly don’t find the treasures that I used to find. Long gone are the days of $3 copies of Pokemon Blue Version and $10 Sega Dreamcasts. How sad!
This article will showcase a few fun things that we found while thrifting in May, June, and the beginning of July:
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First up is this vintage Pokemon poster. This poster is officially licensed by Nintendo, with the Nintendo seal of quality in the bottom righthand corner. In the bottom lefthand corner, there is branding for Scorpio Posters out of Brooklyn, New York. This poster is a very early one, as the copyright date reads 1999. Additionally, one can tell that this is early Pokemon art simply because of the way Ash and Pikachu are drawn. My Goodwill was charging $6 for this poster. Initially, I wasn’t going to buy it because I felt the price was too high. My Mom pointed out that the frame alone was probably worth $6 (and she was right). This poster is now being stored in my classroom to be hung up next month when school starts.
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Next item is a sealed a Video Now Color FX. Video Now was a portable video player by Hasbro one could use to watch videos on the go. Video Now players read little cartridges (called PVDs or personal video discs) that typically held about thirty minutes of a selected cartoon. Video Now Color FX was the fourth and final iteration of Video Now players, with the first run of Video Now Players only showing video in black and white. Subsequent releases would, however, play video in full color. While I didn’t pick this up, I think I should have. It would have looked cool on our shelf of intrigue. Goodwill had a sealed blue one for $6 and a sealed pink one for $3. Very cool! Very nostalgic!
Next up is a board game that my little brother actually found when we went thrifting together a few weeks ago: Pokemon Black and White: Quick Capture Game. This board game requires the player to match Pokemon types, sizes, and power levels in an attempt to “catch” Pokemon in particular patterns. Thankfully, all of the 100 or so cards were present and accounted for in this copy of the game and we snatched it up for only $3! The game is actually pretty fun—we played a few rounds on vacation last week! We also found a COMPLETE Wayne's World VHS Board Game at a local antique shop. Excellent! We haven't played the Wayne's World game yet, but we are definitely going to do that soon. Perhaps a board game review is in order?
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A word of thrifting advice: always count the cards, pieces, etc. before buying a used board game. Incomplete games are the worst and are just about impossible to extra pieces for.
My next find, sadly, wasn’t complete but was still very cool nonetheless. I found a brand new PlayStation 2 DDR 2 Supernova dance pad! I love rhythm games like DDR and Guitar Hero, however, I don’t actually have any DDR games in my collection. When I saw this big box game stuffed in with the board games, I was beyond excited! The dance pad was tightly bound and folded inside the box, however, the actual game was missing. How sad! I was so excited for this big box too! I passed on this one, as the game wasn’t included. In hindsight, I should have probably just picked this up for $3 and replaced the game from a local game store or eBay. Oh well, live and learn! Bonus find: vintage Pokemon VHS tapes! The Gold and Silver clam-shell containers are simply gorgeous!
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This next find is amazing but I simply could not justify this purchase, as space would be a huge concern. This isn’t something that you’d find at a Goodwill nowadays, as Goodwill doesn’t accept large TV or computer monitors anymore. However, we found this at a Saint Vincent De Paul, which thankfully DOES accept old tech donations. (This proved useful in Aaron’s quest to build a retro gaming setup last month.) Aaaanyways, this is an ancient Pac-Man arcade monitor, complete with arcade burn-in and everything. I can’t even begin to imagine how many games of Pac-Man were played on this old behemoth. I guess someone wanted to replace the monitor but keep the original cabinet…? Hopefully they replaced it with an era-appropriate monitor. I can’t stand the idea of a new monitor in a vintage cabinet. Anyways, at $20, this monitor wasn’t a bad deal, however, it was super heavy and a huge space hog. Sadly, a pass for now!
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At the same thrift store, we found a very strange piece of gaming memorabilia. That is, a Resident Evil 5 snow globe. Yep, that’s what zombies make me think of too—holiday décor! Haha! This snow globe…err, sand globe.. features the main characters from Resident Evil, Chris and Sheva. After doing a little research, this was actually the pre-order gift for RE5 on the PlayStation 3. At only $3, this was a cool little thing to find. I personally haven’t played any RE games, but I’d really like to play Code Veronica sometime if I can ever find it on the cheap!
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That's all of the exciting things we've found this summer! With over a month of summer left, you can probably expect one more thrift blog before the school bells start a'ringing again. Let us know in the comment section below if you've had any cool thrift or antique store finds!
Happy Hunting!
- Helntaro
