Yard Sales #16 – Season Finale

Well, yesterday kicked off the beginning of fall.  I can’t say that I mind the change.  Although I’m going to miss the nice weather, the fall season has it’s perks.  One of them is not yard sales.  I’m sure this will be my last post about yard sales until April-May 2013.  And it’s sad, because you can really find some great stuff(for some great prices).  It’s really hit or miss when it comes to thrift stores and second hand shops(not to mention hit or miss prices…everyone is an expert 🙂 ).  But this installment yielded a very nice selection of stuff that I’m into.

We’ll start with cool, and end with coolest.

This was one of two Alfs spotted at the first sale that we stopped at.  This one and the other that I passed on were from a Burger King promotion, back in 1988.  This one had it’s tag intact(the other didn’t), so I figured it was worth the $1 asking price.  This will fit nicely with my unintentional Alf collection(we’ll have to see that one of these days).

Anything Zelda related is a must-buy in my book, as it’s my favorite video game franchise ever(I’m sure I’ve mentioned this a bunch of times)!  The best part is that the woman running the sale only wanted $1 each!  Both of these guides are for Twilight Princess.  The awesome hard cover edition is normally selling for $20-$30 dollars(or more).  And I’m sure the other(the Nintendo Power one), goes for around the same.  The thing with finds like these is, while they may be worth a little something on the secondary market, I’m not really inclined to get rid of them.

A little confession.

Twilight Princess, while I own it(for gamecube), and it’s from my favorite franchise, it’s the only Zelda game I have never played(I will work to rectify that)!

I got these at Richie Rich’s(you’ve heard about this place from me plenty of times before), so this may be consideere cheating…but I went to Richie’s while I was yard saling.  So, it counts.  These guys were hidden behind a few plush bears, but I spotted them!  They were marked at $4 each.  I countered with $1 each(they’re pretty rough).  I was told that I could take them at $2 each.  But the American Picker in me offered $3 for both.  And my deal was accepted.  Panthro appears to be okay, and his “action” works(for the most part).  Monkian’s face is roughed up badly, and his “action” does not work at all.  The villians from Thundercats seem hard to come by, and any Monkian, is better than no Monkian.

Normally, old-school Thundercats figures would be the find of the day.  But that was not the case this time around.

Oh no.  I found these guys!

Germs!  I hardly remember these guys, and I’ve seen them on a bunch of sites, but I’m having a hard time recalling if I actually owned any!  They seem right up my alley, and I immediately knew what they were when I saw them on a table ten feet away from me.  For 50 cents each, there was no way I was leaving them behind.

On the right is “Huppahickasilia”; “Commonly known as the hiccup”*.  And on the left we have “Sweatystinkiosis”; “Commonly known as body odor”*.  These are very fun, and quite nice looking to the eye.  It’ll be a fat chance before I find any of these again!

When I took them out of their test tubes(I’d take a guess that these are often missing), they felt(and smelled like ), they were brand new.  Taking a look at what the going rate for some of these, I’d say they were a pretty sweet find!  But as always, I’m not interested in getting rid of them!

What a great way to send off the 2012 season!

* – information obtained from The Dork Dimension.

Yard Sale Finds #8 and Some Other Stuff

While this weekend wasn’t all that great for yard/garage-saling, it was a nice end to an awesome week.

Earlier this week, a co-worker brought me this.

On a break at work, we had gotten on the topic of video games.  Long story short, I was given what you see above.  It’s an Atari 2600, 2 joysticks(I know they’re not the original ones), and 11 games.  The games are, Grand Prix, Centipede, Q-Bert, Donkey Kong Jr., Ms. Pac-Man, Missile Command, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Battlezone, Mouse Trap and Defender.  90% of the games are classics!  We’ve been doing some cleaning out and rearranging stuff at my place, so I haven’t been able to play any of them yet.  I’m looking forward to playing the god-awful Pac-Man port for this system.  The Atari 2600 was the first home console I had ever played.  It’s reign came to an end when the NES came into my life somewhere around 1985-86.

Yesterday we decided to hit the road and look for garage sales.  There were a few quick showers in the early afternoon, and that may have been why we didn’t see many sales.  At the sales we were able to find, the wares were plentiful, but of no interest to me.  The upside was, I didn’t spend much.

Everything pictured came to a grand total of $2.25.  I bought Sorry! for a few reasons.  I don’t know how old the one I had growing up was, but this one (1972) looks just like it.  And secondly because it’s a fun game to play.  The Snoopy book was 50 cents, but it’s classic Snoopy.  I found the awesome little Batman at a church sale for 25 cents!  The colors look great, the sculpt is fun, and best of all, he has a cloth cape!  The Santa Clause is a Hallmark Holiday Magic ornament that plugs into a light strand an lights up.  It looks pretty neat, and if it works, the 50 cents I paid was a hell of a deal!  There’s one other thing I want to mention about Sorry!, and that is that this particular ones game tokens look like they’ve barely been used.

What really sealed the deal of this being an awesome week, is what we’ll be looking at next.

It’s been said that good things come to those who wait.  I’ve been really patient.  And that patience finally paid off!

🙂  🙂  🙂  🙂  🙂  🙂  🙂

Our plan for yesterday was to look for garage sales in areas that are a little further from where we live.  Going outside of our local area adds a newness to the hunt.  Different people with different stuff.  While the area was new to us for yard sales, we were familiar with the area.  I found Wheeljack in this area’s Wal-Mart.  I wish my local Wal-Mart had the toy selection I saw yesterday.  I will be making subsequent trips to this store.

There was an incredible selection of Transformers, and there were 2 of these left.  I have been looking for this figure for months!  I checked many stores with no luck.  On Amazon and Ebay, this guy is selling for over $25.00!  That’s ridiculous for a new toy, and I refuse to pay an inflated price for an imaginary premium.

The head sculpt looks better than the G1 Wheeljack, and the body of the alt-mode had to be modified for legal reasons.  Still, it looks great, and is my favorite in the Generations line thus far.  The funny thing is that the instructions were actually helpful with the transformation(this is a first).  Wheeljack looks great in either mode.  His car design is sporty and sleek.

It looks just as nice as the original.  In robot mode, the head sculpt looks exactly like he did in the G1 cartoon.  His G1 counterpart is a great toy, but the head just isn’t right.  This one improves on the original, without taking away anything.

Even though I got him after almost everyone else did, I’m still happy to own this.  This gets a 10 out of 10 in my book.  Congrats to Hasbro, for getting this one right!

I have some great stuff in the pipeline, and if I can learn how update a little less erratically, we’ll see see it in the coming days.  Wish me luck!

McDonald’s $1,000,000 Menu Song

This is the mystery item that I purchased with the MOTU figures I found while yard/garage-saling this past weekend.

This is for a promotion that McDonald’s ran back in 1989.  You would of found this in a Sunday newspaper around February of ’89(judging by the expiration dates of the coupons).  The black portion is actually a(cardboard) record that you could play on a turntable for a chance to win one million dollars.  Behind the record on the paper backing are the lyrics to the McDonald’s Menu Song.  On the recording, you will hear an instructor tell his class to repeat the song after him.  If your record had the class sing the song without messing up, you won the million dollars.  Here’s the lyrics…

“Big Mac, Mc DLT, a Quarter-Pounder with some cheese, Filet-O-Fish, a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a Happy Meal, McNuggets, tasty golden french fries, regular and larger sizes, and salads, chef or garden or a chicken salad Oriental. Big-Big Breakfast, Egg McMuffin, hot hotcakes and sausage, maybe biscuits, bacon, egg and cheese or sausage, danish, hash browns too, and for dessert: hot apple pies, and sundaes three varieties, a soft-serve cone, three kinds of shakes, and choc’laty chip cookies, and to drink: a Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, and orange drink, a Sprite and coffee, decaf, too, a lowfat milk, also an orange juice. I love McDonald’s good time,great taste, and I get this all at one place.  The good time great taste of McDonald’s.

 

The stated odds of having the winning record was 1 in 80,000,000.  I have always had this song pop up in my head over the years(parts of it anyway).  I also remember thinking that this was one of the coolest promotions ever.

On the reverse side of the paper backing there are coupons, and scratch-off type boxes for a chance at a share of another $1,500,000.

As you can see, no coupons clipped, and no rub-offs rubbed.  I’m surprised that the record and the paper survived together this long.  I love finding stuff like this!  Advertising is kind of boring in today’s world, so it’s a nice reminder of the way things used to be.

I’ll be aiming to hit posts for 3 straight days tomorrow, but I’m planning on 4+ days(a first?).

Yard Sale Finds #6

So, it’s been a week and a half since my last post.  For the Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I, along with a few friends decided to go camping.  It was nice to get away from civilization for a few days.  Upon my return, I just didn’t have the motivation(or any content really), to write.  While I do have lots of stuff I could write about, there just wasn’t anything new that was jumping at me for coverage.  But this weekend reinvigorated me with new finds and additions.  Not to mention that my blog here turned 1 this past May 31!

While we were camping, I was hoping to run across some wildlife.  There wasn’t much aside from your run of the mill birds and insects(too many), but I did have the pleasure of meeting of one wild acquaintance.

What you see in my hands above is an Eastern red-spotted salamander(or newt).  I found Newton here(that’s what I named him), walking across the forest floor after a brief rain shower.  These guys are not very fast and they’re extremely docile.

Fast forward to yesterday.  As I’ve mentioned recently, there are village wide garage sales starting to take place on the weekends.  This weekend was Richmondville Days.  This village wide sales happen around the same time every year, and Richmondville Days is the one I look forward to the most.  In past years, I have usually made my best finds here.  And this year did not disappoint.

It’s Gizmo!  He was a steal at 25 cents, and will make a great companion to the Mohawk I scored last year.

I’m not a huge Star Wars collector, but I do love me some sweet Star Wars toys.  On the left is a Stormtrooper Burger King toy from 2005 I found for a quarter.  There’s a button on the back, that when pushed, emits a light through the bottom of an Imperial logo.  It’s hard to explain, so I took a picture of it, just for you guys.

To the right is J’Quille(any relation to Shaq? 🙂 ).  From what it says on his card, he was in Return of the Jedi, and was sent to assassinate Jabba the Hutt.  But his plans “were rendered moot when Jabba was killed during the Rebels’ rescue mission at the Pit of Carkoon”.  I remember Jabba’s Sail Barge, but I don’t recall this fella(like I said I’m far from a die-hard fan).  But all of the different species in the Star Wars films look so friggin’ cool!  The lady I bought this from had about a dozen carded figures, and were selling them for 2 dollars each!  Hindsight tells me that I probably should of bought them all.  The only one I regret not buying is Rappertunie.

I picked up these three NES games for a total of $6.00.  Ghost Lion looks to be the best deal, as this game normally sells in the 20 dollar range.  I passed on the games I already have, except for Karnov, which was pretty beat up.  It’s always nice to add to the video game collection(especially NES and SNES), for a small sum.

Starting from the left we have a “Fright Features” Winston Zeddmore(his action works great), a four pack of miniature Ninja Turtles, Rahzar and Skeletor.  With the exception of  Skeletor, I bought this lot for $3.00 from this one old couple who always have great figures every year.  And Skeletor only ran me $1.50.

I found all of these fast food toys in a “free” box.  There’s 4 different BK TMNT toys, a Plankton toy(from BK as well), and a Furby(BK).  There were a ton of others that I had no interest in.

Ending the post with free fast food toys seemed pretty lame to me.  So here’s an added bonus.

All of these came from my friend Gary.  I found the ALF on the right under his porch about a week and a half ago and he said I could have it.  He gave me the other Alf and Darkwing Duck yesterday.

I also found a new soda yesterday(I found it when I was getting a couple of bottles of Pitch Black), that I’ll review tomorrow evening.

Yard sale finds #2

Today we have some cool items that I obtained going yard-saling yesterday.  This venture proved to be less successful than the last.  While I did not get as good a haul as I anticipated, I returned home happy nonetheless(is that correct?).  The items will be listed in the order of their coolness.  I figured that way to be best, because if I showed them in the order that I found them, this would end up being pretty anti-climactic.

So, let’s get down to business.

First up, let it be known that I am a big ice hockey fan.  Since I started watching hockey games at the age of ten or eleven, I have been a faithful follower of the New York Rangers.  Most of the time I go yard saling or garage saling, I’m not looking for hockey related merchandise.  But what I found came home with me because it is a similar to an item I once owned.

I believe these guys were called “Hockey Brats” or something.  This keychain is stamped 1986 and looks almost brand new.  We were perusing the streets a little after 4 pm, and a lot of people were done for the day, so we stumbled upon a few piles next to the curb, marked “free”.  My motto is, “If it’s free it’s for me!”.  I found this guy and a couple of paperback books absolutely free of charge.  I just think it’s funny that the Philadelphia Flyers(the team this guy plays for), lost in the Finals this year and he wound up in the trash.

Next up, we have something that I haven’t owned before.  This is hard to believe.

This is a Koopa Paratroopa from the 1989 McDonald’s Super Mario Bros. 3 happy meal promotion.  This guy is missing the bulb and tube that connects to his rear end to make him hop.  The Koopa Paratroopa is one of my all time favorite Nintendo characters.  He was found in a box of mixed crap.  I figured he probably cost about 25 cents, and when I asked the lady how much, she said, “You can keep it.”  So far we haven’t spent any money and we have something to show for it.

This next item is the most recent.  He comes to us from the 2002 McDonald’s promotion for Transformers Energon.  Ladies and gentlemen…Scorponok!

This guy actually transforms very well.  For a Happy Meal toy, this is surprisingly well made.  He was in a box of items going for 25 cents each.  I located his matching trading card in the same box and got both of them for the low, low price of one quarter.  Still haven’t even broke a dollar yet.

I saved the biggest and most expensive find for last.  I won’t say what it is, I’ll just show it to you.

That’s right people.  We have a 1986 Lazer Tag gun and target.  The gun is missing a cover for the light, but other than that, I see nothing wrong with it.  Both the gun and the target take a 9-volt battery to operate and I currently don’t have any to test it.  I believe the target might have been part of the vest that you would wear, as there’s a patch of velcro on the back of it.  This was the most expensive purchase of the day totaling fifty cents.

Ther you have it folks!  A pretty good day.  I only spent 75 cents.  And for those of you who wish to know the books I got…they were, Shutter Island, Go Ask Alice and a 1954 copy of Lord of the Flies.

Update 9/9/10: I misidentified the McDonald’s Transformer.  I mistakenly thought it was Scorponok (being that the card I found him with was a Scorponok card, and the color scheme was appropriate), when in fact it is Megatron(which is sadly missing the turret for his tank mode).