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Chi-Style Drunksaling: Vol. 5.2 - Down in the Park

June 26, 2006 By Glenn Turner

Unitdaisy and I were so inspired by the (now defunct) drunkgamers.com's garagesaling adventures that we decided to follow their example and searched about Chicago, scrounging for games and, when we were done, forced others to relive our experience.

For those unfamiliar with the term drunksaling, it's simple: It's kamikaze garagesaling for video games! The following excursion took place on June 17th, 2006.

G. Turner: Week two started off innocuously enough. Nothing terribly pressing was found in the classifieds, however there were quite a few clusters of block sales close to home that had us feeling confident that we'd find something worthwhile.

G. Turner: Not the friendliest of sale signs, but I've seen worse.

unitdaisy: The utter lack of time and attention people put into making signs for garage sale and apartment rentals always boggles my mind. If your sign looks really crappy why should I think you have anything worth selling? Pride, people, have some pride.

G. Turner: This equation is beyond explanation.

unitdaisy: Dunno - it seems pretty straight forward to me, until the year 3000, a merry Christmas is guaranteed by the laws of time and space (and elves).

G. Turner: The welcoming back-alleys of Chicago! Check out those mattresses!

unitdaisy:I am grateful I have never been at a point in my life where the only mattress I could afford was the free one next to the trash can.

G. Turner: Couldn't we all use a little geek love?

unitdaisy: Looks like the book itself has already had a bit too much lovin', maybe someone was extra hopful.

unitdaisy: Now here is where a geek can find some love!

G. Turner: This self-proclaimed popular edition of Monopoly seems to have fallen out of favor. I was quite enamored with the set however, the prices at this sale were exorbitant, at least compared to garage sale standards. A good rule of thumb at garage sales: if it's smaller than a breadbox, you're a sucker to pay more than $20.

unitdaisy: This was the sale where we weren't allowed to walk on the grass. Goodness gracious why not set it up in the alley rather than on the pathway wide enough only for a single person if the lawn is so precious - look but don't touch grass is ridiculous.

G. Turner: Perhaps my favorite estate sale sign ever. At least they're upfront about it!

unitdaisy: I wish someone had liked it enough to actually go to it, meanie. I have many rooms that fit many sizes of heirlooms.

G. Turner: Experience has taught us that park sales are supreme. I'm not sure if it's because it requires more planning, or if it's simply that the sales aren't being conducted in someone's backyard, but organization of items are better here, people are more polite and they're in general a lot more pleasant than your standard garage sale.

unitdaisy: And one can always find a nice pie plate.

G. Turner: In fact, the first sale we encountered upon walking through the park gates has some honest-to-goodness games. Games in their original packaging! Games that hadn't been slobbered on, or worse! Granted, they aren't the finest or rarest games ever, but Buffy: Chaos Bleeds is worth $3!

G. Turner: To add to the geekery, the proprietor was also selling all his trade paperbacks for a buck each. Fantastic!

G. Turner: Oh Global Star Software, you've been a persistent thorn in my side for years. You can't imagine how many people buy these CDs and actually expect that they're getting full-versions of the programs. And you can't imagine how much I hated having to tell them otherwise.

G. Turner: Billy Lee, wrapped in plastic.

unitdaisy: Maybe he is trying to lose weight.

G. Turner: R.A.D.'s no R.O.B., that's for sure.

unitdaisy: I wonder if he does dishes. I could use a robot that does dishes.

G. Turner: A word to the prospective professional piercers: picking up cheap piercing equipment that has been packaged in tape is probably not a wise career move.

unitdaisy: Seriously - I feel infected just looking at it.

G. Turner: The first orphaned Nintendo 64 we found this week! At least the proper cabling has been preserved.

G. Turner: Need to have a bit of a sit? Get your palm read at the same time. Now that's service!

unitdaisy: "You will buy many items only to sell them in your own garage sale in two years!"

G. Turner: On that note, we scampered off to the batch of sales, which were mostly unremarkable.

unitdaisy: Does anyone even still know how to play cribbage?

G. Turner: An Xboy prototype?

My 541st character flaw: I can never resist a bad Xbox joke.

G. Turner: If only all sales were heralded with such puppetry pomp.

unitdaisy: My sale will have a trained monkey. With a hat.

G. Turner: Joe Dante holds my heart.

G. Turner: A computer in every home and a copy of Riven to accompany it!

G. Turner: Up until this point everything was going just dandy. We were breezing our way from sale to sale and had already accumulated a trunk-load of junk that will surely collect dust under our roof for years to come. However, once we went to consult our trusty print-outs to find the next sale, we realized that somehow along the way we had lost our valuable guides, leaving us adrift and lost on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon.

G. Turner: Luckily, we were within driving distance to our house so, in theory, the missus would be able to print out another copy of our homebrew map and get right along to the next sale. Frankly, I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner, as I'm relatively cavalier with our saling documentation.

unitdaisy: Of course that theory was negated once we reached home. Since I hadn't saved the new files (why? They would theoretically be obsolete by the time we come home.) my computer chose that opportunity to freeze (as is becoming more frequent) and denied me access to my hard won research. It then just blinked at me with an innocent question mark when I tried to reboot. Blink...blink...blink...blink... We had to piece together a few more sales from the original raw data - so it was on to the Victorian furniture.

G. Turner: We visited this sale primarily because they advertised swords. What the hell were we thinking? But hey, a free calculator when you plunk down $20+! I assume that's so you can calculate just how much money you lost.

unitdaisy: We took no pictures of the Victorian furniture I couldn't afford because it was so pretty my heart hurt with longing every time I looked at it.

G. Turner: A Sorny Pictures Production.

G. Turner: A home so embarrassed of the garage sale it contains that it resorts to hiding its own address? Preposterous!

unitdaisy: Maybe they were just in the Witness Protection Program? The government is cutting back these days.

G. Turner: We bought a few of these McDonald's Sonic games when they first came out, but it wasn't until I saw them all lined up like this that I noticed the buttons and the placement of said buttons are a bit ...racy.

G. Turner: And a second copy of The Sims. In five years, will copies of Spore litter the streets?

G. Turner: After stopping off at a local pub for a mediocre chicken sandwich and several Sam Adams, we decided to hit up the local thrift stores. Little did we know that this decision would turn an otherwise uneventful saling trip into one with ample rewards...

G. Turner: ...but not quite yet. Here in Lakeview's Brown Elephant thrift store we see another copy of Riven. I think they reproduce asexually.

G. Turner: All right, now this is a step in the right direction!

G. Turner: It's a bit tough to make out, thanks to the glare, but Icewind Dale is suffocating next to all those Star Trek games.

G. Turner: I spy with my CD-i... a trash-tastic interactive experience!

G. Turner: And here is the second of two neglected (and probably abused) Nintendo 64s. This one had a controller extension cord, but lacked any controllers. Oh my!

unitdaisy: Maybe we should start a farm for retired consoles like they have for race horses.

G. Turner: Our final stop before heading home consisted of a quick jaunt to Andersonville's Village Thrift Store. We were here last year and found absolutely nothing, so we expected to have a cursorary look around before exiting. Here we have a pricey (presumably non-functional) Game Boy with a surely broken Light Boy strapped to it.

G. Turner: Some stores get really upset when they see you taking pictures, and low and behold, they were livid when they caught me snapping photos of these clothes, presumably stolen from an orphanage.

unitdaisy: Damn, the possibilities.

G. Turner: Luckily, right as we were about to leave, unitdaisy spied an Atari 5200 cart buried under some plastic bags on a shelf. And then she found another. And another.

unitdaisy: It's like when you pick up a shiny pebble on the road and realize it is a nugget of gold and then you spy another and look up to discover everything is made out of candy!

G. Turner: Before we knew it, we had a stack of mediocre, but cheap, 5200 games, a handful of worthwhile NES carts, and a copy of Columns for the Game Gear. Finally, I have a Game Gear game to play on my three year old Game Gear (also found at a thrift store several years ago. It's in the archives around here, somewhere...).

G. Turner: Of course, we weren't allowed to continue taking pictures in the store, and I didn't want to push my luck, so instead here are some post-shopping pics of our haul. It's just as well, since my camera's memory card was almost full anyway.


Click the picture for a larger version

Click the picture for a larger version

G. Turner: Oh yeah, and the two Genesis games were found at another Brown Elephant located by our house. Again, nothing terribly rare, but I have fond memories of Sword of Vermilion.

Find of the Week: Columns for the Game Gear. I admit that it's a rather foolish choice, but I've been hoping to stumble upon a decent Game Gear game (especially a non-sports related one) for years now.

Lesson of the Week: Save your garage sale lists and maps early, save them often, and get a text editor that automatically saves unsaved drafts (like my personal favorite, UltraEdit). This way, even if you lose your maps, you'll have a copy waiting for you.

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11 comments for ‘Chi-Style Drunksaling: Vol. 5.2 - Down in the Park’

#1 quazz4life Jun 26, 2006 04:30pm

I need to find a companion game for my Game Gear. all I have is Shining Force.

#2 Servo Jun 26, 2006 08:48pm

Your documented travels truly inspire me to scour the local sales and thrift stores. Perhaps when I'm living somewhere with space to hold all that neat schwag...

Also, you missed the pic of the gameboy

#3 R. LeFeuvre Jun 28, 2006 10:21pm

A Boy and His Blob! Sweet.

Why do I like that game so much.... :/

#4 w3a2 Jun 29, 2006 05:35am

man, if only the garage sales in our area weren't mostly retirees beridding themselves of ABBA records and broken coffee tables it'd be worthwhile me doing this.

#5 tremoir Jul 5, 2006 03:40pm

I've actually read the book "Geek Love". It's definitely... different. Along with "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk, Katherine Dunn is a local Portland author. We get all kinds here, I guess. lol

#6 quazz4life Jul 6, 2006 11:10pm

I found where you can buy AV and power cords for your old systems, Mr Turner.
here is an NES/SNES/Genesis power adapter

#7 Glenn Turner Jul 6, 2006 11:31pm

I'm actually all set for NES/SNES and Genesis adapters now, but thanks for the link. Too bad they don't have Sega CD AC Adapters. :(

#8 quazz4life Jul 6, 2006 11:43pm

Would it be that different than a Genesis adapter?
If it is, Radio Shack has many multi-adapters you should try.

#9 Glenn Turner Jul 6, 2006 11:53pm

Yeah, the Sega CD AC Adapter is different. In fact, the Genesis has three different types of AC Adapters, one for each model.

I've tried the Radio Shack route before and have had bad luck, as some adapters are pretty proprietary. Consequently, I try and stick as close to 'made specifically for the system' as I can.

#10 hobbie Jul 7, 2006 12:20am

Fable is such a good read, I'll take it off your hands if you don't want it.

#11 jt-3d Jul 20, 2006 12:37am

Man I would have grabbed that TV/radio thingy.