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Chi-Style Drunksaling: Vol. 5.6 - Inherited Goods

August 18, 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 trip took place on July 29th, 2006.

G. Turner: We almost didn't get in any saling in this weekend. See, we kind of double-booked our Saturday by promising we'd help a friend move stuff into storage (more on that later) and attend a party in a neighboring state. But I insisted that time for garage sales could be found, so we made time.

unitdaisy: He's like a slave driver cracking the whip every week. Many hours of sleep were maimed and sacrificed in the ceaseless quest to "make time for garage sales."

G. Turner: If the sale is in the garage, what's with the drawers in the yard?

unitdaisy: Maybe one member of the household was secretly trying to get rid of them. "Of course I'm not trying to sell your grandmother's dressers, I just want to air them out a bit!"

G. Turner: Say, you have a lot of items that need airing out, and we have an entire back yard free...

unitdaisy: So many books look frumpy, but this book is just oozing with appeal.

G. Turner: Full disclosure: I was born & raised in Vermont which, as you may know, was where Howard Dean wore his governor hat before attempting to swing a Democratic nomination. On the mantle at my parent's home is a picture of myself (as well as the other members of an orchestral quartet) with Mr. Dean from when we played at a function in the State House.

In short, I wouldn't try to sell an autographed 'Dean For Prez' sign.

unitdaisy: Of course not, you would want to keep it framed in the living room.

G. Turner: Oh novelty alcohol bottles - how many times will I injure myself before realizing that you contain no hooch?

G. Turner: This type of doll isn't the kind that you sell; it's the kind you tie to a brick and toss in your local river.

unitdaisy: Goodness gracious, I cannot even fathom what function it takes on when you add batteries.

G. Turner: This was the sole sale listed that advertised games. PC games, in fact. It was housed in a theater, where all proceeds from the sale would be funneled back into future productions. And presumably, additional uninspired murals.

unitdaisy: Why do you hate the working man?

G. Turner: PC games! There's enough Civilization to tell your current culture off.

G. Turner: All fine & good, except that we found a copy of Icewind Dale just a few weeks ago!

G. Turner: Quite the dollar bin (although the X-Wing collection was missing its first disc).

unitdaisy: No matter, you can leap right in the middle of the action like Scott Bakula.

G. Turner: The theater offers more than just dirt-cheap and well-maintained strategy games though. Like this mindbogglingly odd puppet...

unitdaisy: Who knew you could get beard and mustache plugs as well.

G. Turner: ...and fine reference material!

G. Turner: Not to mention numerous Forgotten Realms tomes.

G. Turner: Having depleted the theater sale, we headed off for our last stop of the day: a multi-family neighborhood garage sale in Sheridan Park. Normally we scoff at ads that say 'multi-family' or 'over 40 families' or even 'neighborhood' because they often turn out to be four families selling soiled baby clothing. However, this sale was truly massive - several blocks of sales, sales and more sales.

unitdaisy: More walking than than my shoes were expecting which led to savaged heels - poor feet.

G. Turner: New shoes hate heels. It's a fact!

G. Turner: Of course it was also blisteringly hot out. Another ~100 degree Saturday with an unrelenting sun. I believe this photo adequately captures the oppressing haze & heat, as well as a few other facets of 'garage saling culture'.

unitdaisy: I should not have to avert my eyes while shopping - I'll miss a great deal.

G. Turner: Sure, this accordion is nice but... it just doesn't have the 'character' as the one we found a few weeks ago.

unitdaisy: Let's start a farm for unwanted accordions. I can just see them squelching around the house and curling up for a nap in a puddle of sunlight.

G. Turner: And we can sell tickets to the resulting catfights! Accordion vs. Cat! We'll make a mint!

G. Turner: The mother peddling these Game Boys wanted $10 a piece. Not today! I did, however, grab Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for $2 - money well spent.

G. Turner: This woman possessed a tiny, tiny dog ...

G. Turner: Tiny dog! No bigger than a water bottle!

unitdaisy: These pictures add ten pounds - this was truly one tiny dog.

G. Turner: Who shuffled JR?

G. Turner: Your standard (well, slightly above average) garage sale comic bin.

unitdaisy: So much money spent. How can collectors sell their collections.

G. Turner: One of the first FMV games is now mine, all mine!

unitdaisy: Maybe some of his super sleuthing will rub off on you and we can open a detective agency to fund our home for wayward accordions.

G. Turner: Yesterday's PlayStation news today!

G. Turner: Loads of Pokemon, but we did walk away from this sale with Donkey Kong Land 2 and Kirby's Block Ball, one of the more interesting Breakout-inspired I've played.

G. Turner: I don't think I've ever seen so much Highlander in one place, and I've certainly never seen someone so proud of it.

unitdaisy: She was intense to the extent I am certain she has merely replaced them with copies on DVD.

G. Turner: From there we scampered over to my friend Dave's apartment, where he was packing up the last of his belonging to shove into storage. Dave's been my gaming compadre for several years now; he's both a gaming enthusiast and a collector. He was trawling the local thrift stores for finds years before unitdaisy and I even met! Fun fact: Dave has appeared in a previous drunksaling adventure!

This weekend was his last in town as he had received a better job offer far, far away - in another country. That meant re-evaluating his belongings, scrapping what he didn't want and setting aside most of the rest in storage. We had agreed to help him move what he wasn't taking with him to his storage unit and, in turn, he was off-loading much of what he no longer wanted to us.

G. Turner: This actually ended up being much more than anticipated: four loaded boxes, full of old tech and games. While we didn't exactly acquire these from a garage sale, our inheritance of the pieces were similarly motivated!

G. Turner: An early Sears-published Pong set.

unitdaisy: Sears, another gaming house unceremoniously shoved out of the market by Sony.

G. Turner: The PC games Dave no longer wanted. The Interplay collection is quite nice, if for no other reason than the included paperback containing each and every manual in the package. That may not sound like much, but it's about an inch and a half thick. Also included is the Take2 FMV game Ripper, starring Christopher Walken - a camp classic.

G. Turner: Also from the Interplay collection. Must.. resist.. easy dig on.. games journalism.

G. Turner: Sundry drives, an Atari 800 and documentation.

unitdaisy: Bless the owners for not chucking out the papers. We would never be able to get them over the border without proper documentation.

G. Turner: A Commodore tape drive, which goes nicely with...

G. Turner: The Commodore monitor and a Commodore 64 (which I apparently forgot to photograph).

G. Turner: The Coleco Adam, successor to the ColecoVision. Dave informed me that in order to get this working, you have to have the printer for the Adam, as the printer also acts as the system's power supply.

unitdaisy: Intelligent design.

G. Turner: The Adam documentation also had a Black Sabbath postcard slipped into it, for some reason completely lost on me.

unitdaisy: Really, with Dave is any explanation necessary?

G. Turner: The TI-99! And in the cartridge slot...

G. Turner: I'll show that wumpus.

unitdaisy: Run, wumpus, run!

G. Turner: Dave found this huge binder stuffed full of computer game manuals and documentation. While it mostly includes Atari 400 game documentation, there are a number of other interesting game manuals and literature, creating a wealth of cheap site content.

G. Turner: From the mind of Chris Crawford! (You can thank Mr. LeFeuvre for pointing that out to me.)

G. Turner: Sierra's InterAction: "A blatantly biased look at games from the SIERRA family"!

G. Turner: It contains some fascinatingly dated articles, such as this look at the Commodore CD32 in their exhaustive look at upcoming media formats.

G. Turner: It was an exhaustive, but fruitful, weekend. It'll take me the rest of this summer to wade through all the PC games we picked up, much less get all this old hardware up and running, but that's a topic for another article. Let's get on with the closing details.

Find of the Week: Remember, the 'find of the week' isn't always what's the rarest or most expensive acquisition - it's what item we took the most delight in. We're not saling as collector -, we pick up mostly what interests us and have little desire to constantly search for rare 'variants' and whatnot.

As such, the games manual collection, both from an ephemera point of view as well as games history perspective, probably wow'ed us the most (and that's saying a lot given this week's haul). Plus the cover art for most of the manuals is simply fantastic.

Lesson of the Week: Dave taught us a valuable lesson before he left: always buy all associated parts of a hardware set - leave nothing, not even the printer, behind. That printer might not be as ancillary as you think.

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6 comments for ‘Chi-Style Drunksaling: Vol. 5.6 - Inherited Goods’

#1 jt-3d Aug 18, 2006 10:19pm

Massive. Dave's place was the coolest. Now if you'd slapped that tiny dog on a bun or played that accordian, it would have been harder to choose.

#2 Anne Packrat Aug 19, 2006 09:17am

Sadly, I own the Dallas card game. It was given to me as a birthday gift by a friend who knew I liked Magic and figured one card game was as good as another... Or else he secretly hated my guts and didn't want to spend any money on me. Never figured out which it was.

#3 w3a2 Aug 20, 2006 07:54pm

Nice work on Dave's place, especially the C64.

a question though, what are you doing with all this stuff you pick up, are you planning to build a gigantic Museum to Gaming Past & Present?

#4 csweasel Aug 21, 2006 11:46am

Very cool. I'd love to see scans of the binder of Atari game manuals. That artwork is so awesome. It'd make for a good set of desktop wallpapers :)

#5 Glenn Turner Aug 21, 2006 12:48pm

Anne Packrat wrote:
Sadly, I own the Dallas card game. It was given to me as a birthday gift by a friend who knew I liked Magic and figured one card game was as good as another... Or else he secretly hated my guts and didn't want to spend any money on me. Never figured out which it was.

So, I presume it wasn't worth the cardstock it was printed on? ;)

w3a2 wrote:
a question though, what are you doing with all this stuff you pick up, are you planning to build a gigantic Museum to Gaming Past & Present?

Most of the stuff we pick up, believe it or not, we play - or at least intend to. Although I don't know what will happen once my office runs out of space.

csweasel wrote:
Very cool. I'd love to see scans of the binder of Atari game manuals. That artwork is so awesome. It'd make for a good set of desktop wallpapers

That's a good idea - I'd been tossing around the idea of wringing some sort of article out of the big binder o' manuals, as well as some of the loads of additional documentation we've stumbled upon. I'll see how decently my scanner treats the manuals...

#6 Anne Packrat Aug 21, 2006 06:51pm

G. Turner wrote:
Anne Packrat wrote:
Sadly, I own the Dallas card game. It was given to me as a birthday gift by a friend who knew I liked Magic and figured one card game was as good as another... Or else he secretly hated my guts and didn't want to spend any money on me. Never figured out which it was.

So, I presume it wasn't worth the cardstock it was printed on? ;)

Dunno never played it. Dallas was off the air when I was six. It was only recently I found out who shot JR.