This must be the find of the century - Gamestation comes good!
Posted by boyo on May 11, 2010 20:16 (May 11, 2010 20:16)
Some days Lady Luck sort of follows you around and everything seems to go your way. The first Sunday in February was a bit like that for me. It all started when I got out of bed 10 minutes or so after the wife and kids and went downstairs to make the obligatory morning cuppa for myself. The kids were eating their morning cereal with lashings of milk that they had served themselves from the fridge. In the rush to satisfy their hunger pangs the milk bottle had been knocked over, spilling 99% of its contents over the kitchen sink. The 1% that was left was rescued and used to make a perfect cup of coffee for myself that helped to kick-start my day. I thought to myself how lucky I was.
After breakfast, the Mrs asked me to check our lottery ticket numbers against the previous night’s draw and low and behold we had hit the jackpot amount of, wait for it, £10. I was convinced that the day could not get any better than this.
My wife wanted some new curtains for the dining room so we all piled into the family car and headed towards the local town of Leamington Spa. Now shopping with the wife is not something I can say I enjoy. So being a typical male I always try and pick a store that she can visit to get the housey object that we suddenly have to have which is near a shop that would interest me. In this case it was the Blockbuster/Gamestation store for me, and a curtain shop for the wife that was conveniently located next door.
Many Gamestation stores have a display window that is used to show-off some of the retro, and not so retro, items that the store has for sale. In the case of the branch I visited, their display was some distance away from the entrance to the store and could be easily missed by the casual visitor. On looking through the window I was confronted by the usual Sega, Nintendo and Sony suspects that I had seen so many times before. This time though there was a couple of items that grabbed my attention. Sprawled on the floor of the display was the infamous Steel Battalion control panel and accompanying game for the XBOX.
I had not seen one of these before and was gob smacked at the size of the thing as well as the asking price for it. Towards the back of the display was a boxed Sinclair Spectrum 128k with the asking price of £24.99. Now I had never owned or seen one of these before either and to find one boxed for such a low price just summed up my luck that day. A second sticker on the box revealed that there were some games provided with the computer as well. So into the store I went.
The item was retrieved from the window. On examining the box there was small rips here and there but generally it was in fair condition considering its age, as were the polystyrene inserts. I checked the contents inside to make sure everything was there.
Now, that sure does sound like a lucky/good day hehe. Am surprised your gamestation even had a spectrum. The gamesttaion in Aberdeen does not even sell retro stuff and hasnt for a couple years. But saying that, couple months back I was walking past the shop and saw a "MEGADRIVE CONTROLLER" I was amazed and especially as it was only 99p. The guy working said theres no chance there was a megadrive controller in the window so he was shocked also. Couple years back the same thing happened but this time it was £2.99 however that controller never worked but couldnt be bothered to return it. Over the years ive noticed that master system and megadrive controllers break very easily so thats why am always happey to find new ones. I have a box of Nes controllers and almost all of them work perfectly
That is an amazing haul. The original owner looks to have generally been a fairly discerning games purchaser as there are a lot of high quality gems in there.
Jun 3, 2010 18:00:12 (
Jun 3, 2010 18:00
)
