The Hunt and the Haggle

The Hunt:

When I was a kid and the Atari 2600 dominated the video game world, my brother and I found out about a mail order company called Video Villa. Video Villa specialized in video games and after some finagling we finally got our hands on a catalog. Eagerly thumbing through the list of interesting titles, we found a cartridge we really wanted ...it was a called "King Kong". We had no idea that one day this would be a rare collectable but having an eye for the interesting and obscure, we pooled our allowances and sent off for the game. Mind you, our allowances were small so we probably saved for several weeks and after the money had finally accumulated we mailed the letter and waited. Days passed, weeks passed, and after a month or so, when the package still hadn't come, we realized the cause was lost. King Kong would never arrive. As you can imagine this experience left us, at the tender age of 8 and 10, feeling ripped-off and hurt.

Twenty or so years later we attended a fantastic classic game convention (ECGX 2004) as vendors peddling gamebot and before the show was opened to the public, we met a guy who was parting with his collection. In the center of his table, among the plethora of video game merchandise, was a box of Atari games that did not particularly stand out until I asked how much he wanted for the games inside...

The Haggle:

He replied "I'll take five dollars for all of them". This was a huge box of probably 50 Atari 2600 carts and he said he didn't even know what titles were in the box (I remember this well, Scott didn't say anything and was actually contemplating a haggle, but after two seconds I said "ok, i'll take that" -I was afraid someone would take this deal out from under us, its happened before.-ed).

We took the find to our hotel room later and as we went through it we found that there were some hard to find games in this box (Snoopy & The Red Baron and Raft Rider to name a couple). However, we already had these games in the collection so we decided to trade them.

The Haggle Too:

The next day I saw a collector selling a few titles I didn't have, one of which to my shock, was the game that had alluded and haunted me for so long ...KING KONG! I traded him some of the games that I paid 5 bucks for.

When I walked away with that cartridge I felt 10 years old again. The kid in me finally got his game and what made it even more special was that my brother was with me. We played King Kong together as soon as we got home from the convention and it totally blowed!

- Scott Leftwich, gamebot