Trash to Treasure

[v12cl]

My father-in-law upgrades and flips houses, and recently he bought a house with the agreement that he would deal with whatever was left after the estate sale.

During the demo, he found a box stashed away in the attic with 60+ Nintendo / NES Game boxes, plus boxes for the system, game boy, controllers, the zapper, etc.

The lady literally stashed them up there around 1990 and forgot about them. Cardboard box only, no pamphlet, game sleeve or game.

Knowing I was into old gaming systems and collecting old stuff, he told me I could have them, in return for helping him give away / dispose of a bunch of old furniture that was also left around.

I told him "you have a small goldmine here" thinking I'd maybe clear $250-$300 bucks after shipping fees, etc. for 6-8 hours.

Turns out, the boxes are often more valuable than the game.

I just sold Castlevania I, II & III for $320. Apparently game boxes with hang tabs are gold to the right nerd, and my Castlevania I was in perfect condition, including the intact hang tab.

60 more "scratchers" to go, a bunch of which also have tabs.

I found it kind of funny that my childhood was spent collecting worthless cardboard baseball cards when I should have been keeping / collecting the "worthless" cardboard boxes that came with my Nintendo collection. Who saw that coming?

Anyone else got any NES stuff laying around?

[Dan Druff]

My parents might or might not have our old NES in their attic, but they also might have thrown it out. But it sounds like unopened cartridge boxes are the big deal?

[BCR]

What people collect baffles me. Like I stumble upon something and think it will be worth considerable money and I’ll search it on eBay and I’ll see an old auction where it went unsold for $4.99. If I found a bunch of video game boxes and old games I’m sure I would have tossed them. My girlfriend’s mom owned an auction house for a long time. I’ve driven her to a few homes when she’s not feeling well where she just walked in and looked through a 1000 random items and then gave them an offer and knew her margin would fall in an exact range. She was super ethical and had an awesome reputation because of it and still made a huge margin.


Really elite and impressive skill because you’re almost always dealing with people who have no idea what they have. I told her she was like rick from pawn stars the first time I went with her and she looked at me like I had said I heard you used to be a real whore back in the day. I guess the people who really know hate that fake shit.