Retro hunting at yard sales - is it dying?

[Gunstar Green]

I find most yard sales these days to be PlayStation and N64 stuff or GameCube/PS2/XBox/GBA stuff. I'm not a big collector of any of those except maybe GBA so it doesn't help me much but I can find them pretty regularly.

Snag those deals and spread them around the community, Gunstar Green.

Although I should've mentioned that since I've moved I haven't seen much in the way of yard sales unfortunately.

[IcKy99]

In general retro games pre ps2 are getting harder to find since people Like us are gathering them all up. Another issue is sellers pricing games too high simply based on the fact that they Are retro games, my local CL ads are full of uneducated sellers trying to make a quick buck .
Example: guy selling a copy of HoTD2 no case, manual only for $20 when in reality a incomplete copy should sell for no more than $10, same goes for a lot of Nes listings going for over $80 with 1 or 2 common games

[Snatch1414]

In my brief experience it's like anything else: you put in the time for those one or two big scores a year. I pretty much go to yard sales or flea markets as an excuse to get up at a decent hour on Saturdays if nothing else. Most of the time I don't find anything, then again I have a short list of scores that made it all worth it.

Yard sales usually suck, except when they don't haha. I think they're just more risk/reward than flea markets but still just as worthy to show up at. Flea markets might have some good stuff but are competitive as hell and as the summer wears on the good stuff starts disappearing. Yard sales are often total busts but if you show up on time you might strike gold once in awhile. Like I said, it's all about putting the time in.

[SuperDerek]

The problem you describe is regional. In bigger cities, like here in Seattle, everything is scraped clean by other collectors and resellers. There aren't even swap meets withing an hour's drive of here, and the ones further out are mostly resellers with games well above fair market value.

But I've got friends in smaller towns who don't have this problem. In a town of just a handful of collectors, you don't have the competition to deal with, but you also don't have the community, if you're into that sort of thing.

The Game Chasers, The NES Pursuit and Game Quest are all shows that show that you can still find deals on games if you're lucky.