X-Entertainment.com X-Entertainment.com A Proud UGO Affiliate
X-Entertainment loves Christmas and will not stop talking about it, ever.
« [Main Index] »

What’s the deal?

Busy working on a ToyFare article tonight, so this may be a good time for a patented SNT survey.

What's the best deal you've ever gotten? Garage sales, store clearance sales, eBay hiccups -- they all apply. I have some great stories, but I'll save them for the comments thread. See you in a bit.

Posted by Matt on 08/11/2007. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 201 comments

Since the first X-Box is pretty much a dead system, stores have been pushing their last-gen games out for as little money as possible. I scored Chronicles of Riddick for $5. And a shitload of other games like Demon Stone and Beyond Good & Evil.

Chestnuts roasted by blackrob @ 08/11/2007 10:13 PM

For $20, I got a big box full of Beast Wars figures, like first series. Bat Primal and Alligator Megatron, Cheetor, Waspinator, Terrorsaur, and Razorbeast complete. Plus a complete G2 Laserrod Prime.

Chestnuts roasted by Black Zarak @ 08/11/2007 10:13 PM

Old Jim- Free Ice-T metal = Good

Magic Toy- I don’t know if they sampled Psycho or not. I haven’t heard it in about a year.

Thomas- Worst deal ever? I don’t think anyone on this blog can beat poor, poor Nathan Bitner for worst deal ever. (Sorry to reference yesterday’s posts).

Chestnuts roasted by Bludge @ 08/11/2007 10:14 PM

My best friend sold me a Nintendo DS for $35 back in May. Then I bought Pokémon Diamond for about two bucks more than that the next day.

Not bad at all, if I do say so myself.

Chestnuts roasted by Tommy @ 08/11/2007 10:15 PM

The best thing I can think of is a couple of years ago when I found a working Speak & Read at the thrift store for $1.96, and they were having a sale that day of 50% off toys. I’ve actually played with it a couple of times for nostalgia’s sake. Considering what you’ll pay on eBay, I think $.83 is an awesome deal!

The worst deal was probably a couple of years before I found eBay. I was at an antique mall and found a 1976 JCPenney catalog. I collect catalogs and pretty much never found old catalogs anywhere, so I was ecstatic. I think I paid $30 for it. Even with shipping, I could easily get one for half that now.

Oh, this might also count for the worse. There was the time that the grocery store was selling turkey breasts for $8 and I didn’t realize until I had already eaten it that they had charged me $8 a pound and I paid over $30 for it. The bar code hadn’t rung up, so she sent the bagger to find out the price. When he told her $8, she just rung up misc. meat for $8/lb. (So there wasn’t even a UPC on the receipt so I could plead my case once I noticed it.) I had bought a month’s worth of groceries that day, so the final total didn’t raise any red flags. I just happened to glance at the receipt a few days later and noticed that. I could almost feel the blood leave my body.

Chestnuts roasted by Lori @ 08/11/2007 10:20 PM

Bludge, that is so true. Bitner got a raw deal from Mattel certainly.

Chestnuts roasted by Thomas @ 08/11/2007 10:21 PM

at the local flea market i found an original NES system that came with a box full of games (all crappy)which the lady sold to me for $6. the system works perfectly, too

Chestnuts roasted by gdrop79 @ 08/11/2007 10:30 PM

todya i get some “spagehtii” for two dollar
after eat i maybe just go asleep

Chestnuts roasted by chuckyhacks @ 08/11/2007 10:34 PM

I got the Boba Fett UNLEASHED brand new at TARGET for 1.75 last year. Then I got a good deal on those GREMLINS and PREDATOR figures awhile back (there was also a V for VENDETTA, ROBOCOP, and PRINCE OF DARKNESS from LEGEND but I sold them for the same amount I paid for the whole lot!!). I think I have posted these before but they are still the best deals ever.

Chestnuts roasted by The Manimal @ 08/11/2007 10:38 PM

I volunteer in a thrift shop just to get great deals on cheap stuff made even cheaper by my volunteer’s discount.

“42nd Street” on DVD costs $12 or more at FYE. I got it for a dollar at the thrift shop.

I bought five collectible dolls in Victorian gowns for $1.50. They’re part of seasonal displays on my bookcase in my bedroom. One doll for each season and one for Christmas.

Like Jasmine, I love collecting records. Got a huge stack from a secondhand music shop for less than $20. The 20 or so records I’ve bought from the thrift shop have probably cost me less than $10.

Can get hardback books at the thrift shop for as little as fifty cents…or even less during “all the books you can fit into a bag” sales. A mint-condition 70s-era copy of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was a dime.

I found an awesome collection of mint-condition 80s kids’ picture books for less than $5 at a church bazaar last November, including a He-Man book with a 33 1/3-inch record in perfect shape and a Pac-Man maze-themed book that was never drawn in.

Yard sales have yielded everything from a 50s-era teapot for two dollars to seven James Bond videos for five dollars and an adorable original Nala (from “The Lion King”) stuffed toy for a dollar (she “purrs” when you squeeze her rear). Picked up some elaborate 80s/early 90s-era Barbie gowns for my Sailor Moon dolls to wear in my Christmas displays for quarters.

JLAJRC isn’t the only one who’s had great luck with FYE’s used sales. I picked up the Disney “Beauty and the Beast” for $20 and “Sleeping Beauty” for $15 there. Both have been out-of print for years and can cost up to $40 or more at Amazon.com and elsewhere online. Got the recent releases of “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Superman: The Movie” used for about $12 each, and “Galaxy Quest” used was $6 (and technically free, thanks to a buy three, get one free sale).

Chestnuts roasted by starwenn @ 08/11/2007 10:50 PM

The best deal I’ve ever gotten? Last year I bought an NES cartridge at a flea market. It was weird looking, so I looked it up online and found out it was really rare. It was called Myriad 6-in-1. When my car needed work, I put it up on eBay, and ended up selling it for $660. Not bad for a $3 investment.

Chestnuts roasted by Steve W @ 08/11/2007 10:52 PM

It was Christmas, 2001. I bought some baseball thing for my brother in one of those sports memorabilia stores, and I saw it in the corner of my eye: a metal box with Yoda and the Millenium Falcon on it. I looked it over, it was a l.e. box of metallic cards featuring the Empire Strikes Back, my favorite Star Wars movie. It didn’t have a price sticker on it, but a similar Coca cola box next to it said $20. By that time I was broke, so I begged the money off my mom, and went back to the store. When I took it up to the register, the guy told me it would be $80. I think my face melted onto the floor, I was so disappointed. God bless him, he asked me how much I thought it was (I should mention, I looked and sounded like I was about 12 at the time, so I think he felt sorry for me). So I told him about the other box. He gave this big sigh, like “Man, I’m such a git,” and he let me buy it for $20.

In a related note, I also consider getting the original prequel (not special eds) on DVD for $20 each an awesome deal. But that’s only because I was convinced George Lucas would never release them on DVD in their original gloriousness. I’m serious, I was prepared to break a few hundred federal laws in copyrighting and piracy just to have them. And I wasn’t gonna stop there, either. I wanted to put bootlegs in the hands of anybody who wanted them, imagining myself as some kind of 21st century girl Han Solo, sticking it to the man. So it was kind of a relief when George just caved and released them. I’m not cool enough to be Han Solo.

Chestnuts roasted by FyarlGirl @ 08/11/2007 10:54 PM

A 30 gig ipod that I found on campus.

Chestnuts roasted by Eddie Lightning Frog @ 08/11/2007 11:20 PM

Any time a dollar store is selling slime or noise putty in a container that has more than 2 oz. in it, I consider that a good deal.
I’d buy that for a dollar.

Chestnuts roasted by Somethin' Funny @ 08/11/2007 11:22 PM

I was surfing eBay for Weezer’s Lion and the Witch EP and saw several for 100 bucks a pop. Then I found one for 15 bucks.

SCORE!!!

Chestnuts roasted by Knegative @ 08/11/2007 11:26 PM

I’d say the best deal that I’ve ever had was an eBay auction. This woman was getting rid of a ton of here kid’s stuff and she had no clue what most of it was. For around fifty dollars I received two large, and I’m talking three by three boxes, filled with mostly G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero vehicles, big and small, along with some vintage Star Wars figures and MASK toys. If she had listed it right, the G.I. Joe vehicles alone would have cost me around a hundred bucks. : )

Chestnuts roasted by Darth Poop @ 08/11/2007 11:28 PM

Oh, and FyarlGirl I think that you mean original trilogy, not prequel trilogy. The prequel trilogy are the new films, ep 1,2 and 3.

Chestnuts roasted by Darth Poop @ 08/11/2007 11:37 PM

I’m normally just a lurker….but about 15 years ago I bought an original Star Wars: A New Hope movie poster for just $2.50!!

Chestnuts roasted by Ruddie @ 08/11/2007 11:44 PM

danny j

i just caught the right time during a sale at compusa. :)

Chestnuts roasted by cuddles @ 08/11/2007 11:49 PM

I recently came across a garage sale that was selling a box of old action figures.

I noticed a couple of G.I. Joes in there, including Snake-Eyes and Cobra Commander. I naturally assumed that these were the recent re-releases of the toys and bought the whole box for a mere $5.

You can predict what happened. Turns out all the toys were old ones and many were quite valuable. I got over 30 figures, at least 20 of which were from the 1980s. I did an eBay check and guesstimated that I got about $250 worth of toys for my $5.

In retrospect I feel kind of low about it, because the middle-aged lady selling the stuff was probably liquidated her son’s collection while he was off at college or something, and I bet he hit the roof when he found out.

On the plus side, my mantelpiece looks great.

Chestnuts roasted by Doctor Who @ 08/11/2007 11:50 PM

I bought a GameBoy Color with batteries and a Donkey Kong Land 3 cartridge still inside for one dollar. The fellow just wanted rid of it after buying a PSP.

Chestnuts roasted by Der Super @ 08/11/2007 11:51 PM

All I can think of right now is when I was younger and got all the snailiens/ticks for 25 bucks

Chestnuts roasted by SerialPsychosis @ 08/11/2007 11:58 PM

A Sailor Moon purse for $1 it’s a licensed one from Japan. They were at a dollar store. I got 2 different designs. I’ve seen the kind I got go for like $5-10 in the mall and on ebay.

Chestnuts roasted by pikachulover @ 08/11/2007 11:58 PM

Since I stated my best deal above, I might as well do my worst, too.

Wal-Mart had a bin that had a bunch of N64 games for $20 a piece. I grabbed the infamous Superman 64, which many consider basically the second worst video game ever made next to the ET Atari game, because I love comics.

Yes, even at that discounted price, I felt ripped off. Sometimes something that looks like a deal isn’t.

Chestnuts roasted by JLAJRC @ 08/12/2007 12:01 AM

I’m a diehard wrestling fan, and as a kid, one of my most prized WWF tapes was the Piledriver music video tape. Sadly, I left it at a babysitters’ house I never went back to, meaning it was gone forever, and it pretty much scarred me for life. I’d lost a prized piece of my childhood. As young as I was, I knew how the WWF VHS market worked, they’d release tapes that would quickly vanish to make room for the next series, so my chances to simply pick up another copy at the store were long gone. My only other option to at least witness the glory again was a video store carrying it as a rental, thus, every video store I went to for nearly 15 years had me search the wrestling section for that holy image of Hulk Hogan in a hardhat on it. Even when all the old tapes began to fade away from most places, I looked out of habit. When I was about 18, I actually found it at a mom and pop place to rent, and I couldn’t believe it. I instantly registered there so I could rent it, along with a treasure trove of other VERY old WWF tapes. This place had the original 1985 Hulkamania tape in PRISTINE condition, one of the first tapes they’d ever released, the tape itself still brand new, the sticker as bold as the day it was made, playing perfect, not a single tracking line.

Anyways, while I got to see the storied tape, I still felt a void. I needed to OWN it again. I’d seen it go for $40+ on Ebay, but I didn’t even have an account then. When I finally got an Ebay account, about a year after being able to rent it again, I had low expectations to find the tape, let alone at a reasonable price. Finally, after months of searching, I found it. The starting price was 9$, which included shipping, and it was too good to be true, surely, someone would jack up the price before it sold. They didn’t, and I swooped in at the end of the auction to claim the precious tape. Until I actually got it in the mail, I was skeptical it was be in any kind of playing condition. Sure enough, it was in near mint condition, the box perfectly preserved. When I popped that in the old VCR, once again owning the tape, it was the glorious end of a mission a decade plus in the making. And all it cost was 9$.

In a related story, my favorite WWF LJN figure as a kid was JYD, he served as my most played with figure. Even though I’m as hardcore a Hulkamaniac as there is, in playtime, JYD got the main event slot, mainly because I refused to let Hogan lose, thus, I saved him for big time special appearances he could always win, so I didn’t paint myself into a corner by having him be a regular. Anyways, like the Piledriver tape, he too was lost, quite early on into my childhood, along with most of my other LJN figures due to moving. Over the years I’d managed to collect all the major players back, except JYD, only to happen into a vintage toy shop a few years back, where prime condition LJN figures are sold, some in the upwards of $60. They kept them in a glass case, but in looking around to a random assortment of toys, I found a mint JYD mixed in. Expecting him to be worth what the ones in the case were, since they had other JYDs in there in far worse shape for $8-$10 I was shocked to see a price tag of $2 on him. I know it was probably a mixup on their part, but I ended up claiming him for cheap anyways, and I probably hummed Grab Them Cakes all the way home whether I realized it or not.

Chestnuts roasted by Rob @ 08/12/2007 12:01 AM

Add A New Comment!


This entry was posted on Saturday, August 11th, 2007 at 9:11 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.