It’s sometimes a “treasure-hunting adventure”!
Growing up, I lived a very humbling life style. More often than not, we didn’t have things that we wanted, but we always had the things that we needed like food, clothes(although not trendy), and shelter. For that I am grateful and believe the way I grew up help shaped the person I am today. I learned to appreciate the things that I did have in my life and to not take things for granted. Also, the importance of a dollar and the need to save as oppose to spending without given it much thought or consideration first.
Funny enough, I didn’t grow up going to thrift stores. My guess is that since we got most things we needed from low price places like going the Swap Meet on most weekends and shopping at places like Pic’N’Save (now known as BigLots!) and Wal-Mart, we probably never considered or even look into thrift stores other than maybe a few rare occasions.
Fast forward to about my mid-20s. It’s 2013 or 2014 or around that time. I had just gotten a full-time job for a while now with a decent wage and full benefits (this was a huge deal after navigating the world first as a poor college student and then as a college graduate, post-2008 financial crisis working one, and sometimes even two, part-time jobs that only paid minimum wage; no real set work schedule and benefits was not offered to most part-time employees like myself). So with my living standards having received a mild( but much appreciated) upgrade, I had a little extra disposable income I can enjoy and go on an adventure with.
Video games, up to this point, was give or take a thing of the past for me. We grew up with the NES and had just the one game that it came with, Super Mario Bros. Most kids we went to school with had either the then-current Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis, then later the Nintendo 64 or Sony PlayStation.
My household lived a very humbling lifestyle when it came to video games. My very own game system would come in the form of a preowned Sega Dreamcast, which I bought with my own money after getting a job in the school’s cafeteria when I was a Sophomore in high school. Although I did had fun playing the Dreamcast, I also felt that I was “too old” for video games by then as I saw that “elementary” and “middle” school years would have been the better time to enjoy things like video games.
When you’re a sophomore in high school, you had other things to worry about. For me, I was more focused about my grades, how I’m going to get accepted in a college, how I’m going to pay for college, how I’m going to graduate high school, what various awards are being offered by my high school and what classes/grades/score/credits do I need to get said award so I don’t feel left out like I did when I graduated middle school. Also my goal and dream was saving enough money to buy my first car, which was why I was so happy to get the cafeteria job in the first place.
So throughout the remainder of my high school and most of my college years, video games had been present, but it was in the background setting. It wasn’t really the main focus of my attention. People that I knew and hung out with on campus may have been very into video games. They may have been playing their PlayStation Portable or Nintendo Dual Screen handheld game console or talking about how much fun the new Need For Speed Underground for the PS2 was while we hung out at the Pool Hall area at the University campus.
I may have bought my GameCube while I was in college, but it was a rare occasion that I played it. Video games was something I experience at this point in my life from a more “second-hand/third person” perspective because it was one of the focus in the lives of the people I knew in college. It wasn’t a focus in my life as I was busy with classes and going to the University’s career center regularly preparing my resumes and applying for jobs.
Getting back to me having a full-time job with medical and dental benefits and having a little extra disposable income. The previous years after having graduated college had been a struggle. Things had not panned out the way I had hoped, despite my best efforts.
Thrift stores have been something most people shop out of necessity because it’s a way to buy things that you needed, but would not be able to afford otherwise.
So there I was, and I guess you can called it nostalgia, longing for things that sparked my interest or brought me joy from my younger years. One of those things was video games. I’ve always wanted a Super Nintendo and never had a chance to own one. So I thought maybe I can go browsing at thrift stores to see if they have one or at least the games as I could always buy a “clone” console. This was around a time when I didn’t know “retro gaming” was a thing and before people are trying to get top dollar any thing and everything considered “retro”.
I believe in the just that year or the year that followed, I’ve walked into thrift stores more times (and so many times that I’ve lost count) in the single year than I ever had in all my other years of existence combined. To me, it was like going on a treasure hunt adventure. I just never knew what I may find that day I walk in through those doors to browse.
My main attention was of course looking through the electronic/household items for video games consoles and video game disks or cartridges.
Sometimes you walk in and walk out empty handed, but sometimes you walk out with your new-found treasures and sense of achievement and accomplishment as your walk out to your car and seek the next thrift store to visit.
What things have I found when I did find anything all that was of my interest? Well, I found various video games. Mostly PS2 games since I think around that time people were getting rid of their PS2 library. They were still awesome to me, so of course I was more than happy to buy these games at a low price.
One time at a Goodwill I found not one, but two PS2 consoles complete with at least a controller and power plug. One of them had two controllers, controller extension cables, a memory card, and, as I would later found out after having gotten home, a Tomb Raider game of some sort. All for $15! I’m not sure how much PS2 are going for at online auction these days for, but just console alone is probably more than $15. I had just bought the one console as oppose to buying both PS2 consoles that I found that day because although I was super stoked, I wasn’t greedy. I don’t have a whole lot of space at home and also thought, eh, maybe someone else will appreciate the other $15 PS2 bundle.
One of my best days thrift shopping was on a different trip to the thrift store. I had just found a treasure of Dreamcast items. I found a zip lock bag that had Dreamcast controllers (if I remember correctly there was three; I ended up giving one to a friend that had found a Dreamcast console that had no controller) along with various Ethernet cables of some sort. Not sure if they were CAT-3 or CAT-5, but it was part of the package. To top it all off, I also found a copy of Shenmue for the Dreamcast complete with all the disc and the case in the same store. I think the game had a sticker priced at $5.99. I think there was some sort of sale (10% or 25% percent off). So I think I paid less than $12 for that zip lock bag of Dreamcast controllers and less than $5.99 for the Shenmue game. I think each Dreamcast controller and the Shenmue game alone goes for more today than what I paid for everything I found that day.
Oh, and it’s not over yet. There I am, feeling like a winner after having found these Dreamcast items and thought, “you know, let’s hit up another thrift store!” So I drove up to another thrift store that was just a few miles up on a nice sunny day (might have been a Saturday). I walked into a Goodwill and browsed around a little. I walked past people looking at the selection of clothes and headed towards the electronic/household appliance/misc. area. There’s a few shelves aisles, so I started from the first to my left.
Not long after entering the aisle, something caught my eye. “Is that a Nintendo Entertainment System? Wait? It’s on top of something? Another NES? Not one, but two?” I had just came upon what I considered to be a highlight in “retro-gaming” and my “thrifting adventures”. I found two NES consoles, stacked on top of one another, both priced at $10. I hadn’t seen one of these since the one my family use to have as I was a child growing up.
It didn’t came with anything else from what I remembered (no power cable, no RF adapter video cable, no controllers) and I wasn’t sure it even still worked. Well, non-working/as-is example of these were going for at least $20 on eBay and that’s before factoring the price of shipping. So at $10 a piece, I’ll take my chances and grabbed both consoles, one in each hand, and marched towards the register (at least one of them is bound to work). I ended up getting both to work and did offer one to a family member that appreciate it.
The stuff I’ve found I still have most of it. A few items I had given away to someone I knew that I know would appreciate the kind gesture. I’ve found things that were non-video game related like the Starbucks snow globe I have pictured in this post. I found it a few years back and I bought it without knowing too much about it’s value and how much it was worth. I just knew that I saw it, I liked the way it looked, I made sure it wasn’t broken and that the “music” gear level still worked, and I bought it. I thought it was a nice holiday decor piece.
As the sticker in the picture illustrates, it was $4.99 and that’s what I’ve paid for it, plus maybe tax too. A quick search of “Starbucks snow globe 1999” on eBay would yield some examples asking for substantially more.
I hope people find at least something that “sparks joy” in their life. For me, it was browsing thrift store and looking for things that I found interesting. Maybe in a thrift store, you will find something too.