My local newspaper, The Daily Oklahoman, is now available online. Even better, their classifieds are online as well, complete with a search engine. Every day when I come to work and sit down to my desk, I click on the search engine and type in words like “arcade”, “videogames”, “Atari”, and the like. Today, this kicked out:

ORIENTAL ITEMS CLOSE OUT AUCTION Wed., Feb. 11th 10am 3132 N May Ave., inside. 3 arcade games & large inventory. See last Sun. 2/8 ad. Wilford White 823-4670.

Ok, this is perfect, I thought. Lots of people will be there to look at Oriental items, and little ol’ me will be waiting in the wings to scoop up cheap video games! It almost never happens like that, but today, it did.

I got to the auction five minutes early, and got lucky bidder number #13. I’m positive I was the only person there who wasn’t a senior citizen, and other than one or two people, I would have described the audience as “elderly”. The auction was in the back room of a local antique mall, and the whole room was filled with oriental vases, oriental ashtrays, oriental sculptures, oriental dolls … and two (not three) videogames. The first one was Capcom’s Marvel Super Heros Vs. Street Fighter. The other was Rampage – World Tour, from Midway. The Capcom one looked great. Better than great, in fact. It looks almost brand new. No scratches, no gouges … not even any dust! Completely brand new coin mechs and everything. The Rampage one looked good too, but was playing blind (the monitor would not come on). I could hear the sound and everything though, so I know the game was working. I asked one of the workers (about 70 years old) if he knew what was wrong with it, and he said both games were working fine and it was just turned off (they had not noticed it had no video yet). I told him I thought it was on and he looked at it for a minute and said that it was working earlier in the day before they moved it. (That right there threw up a red flag to me and told me it’s probably just a loose wire connection.)

So, the auction begins, but not before the auctioneer’s wife passes around a picture of her great grandson. Then everyone comments on how cute the kid is. I’m not kidding, the auction room had 25 plastic chairs (5 rows of 5) and there were 13 people there bidding.

The auction started at 10, and the auctioneer said he was going to take a break and sell the games at 10:30. So I politely watched as plate after ashtray after knick-knack went by. At 10:30, I looked around and there was only two possible people I would even guess would be bidding against me.

Bidding began, choice, for the two games. It turns out there was only one bidder bidding against me. He started at $100, I went to $150, he went $200, I went $250 … and that was it. $250 for the Capcom cabinet. Not a great price, but not bad. There’s one on eBay right now with a BIN of $800, although that’s way too high. When they asked me choice and I said, “the one that’s not broken.” The auctioneer looked at his helper and the helper said, “the other one won’t come on”. Then I said (loud enough where the other bidder could hear) “yeah, it needs a monitor, that’ll cost about four or five hundred to fix.” I’m still betting it’s a loose wire, but if it does need a monitor I can get one for $100 I’m sure. So they start bidding at $100 and I kind of hemmed and hawed around and finally bid $100. No one else bid, so I got it for the opening bid. Average that out, and that’s $175 each.

I called dad and told him to get his trailer ready. I went to his house and we went back to pick up the games. I’m getting to be an old pro at moving these things. Put the machines on a dolly, dropped ’em on the trailer, and roll out. — none too soon either, as the first raindrops hit our windshield a block or two from my front door.

Man, do I have undying respect for the guys who move these things for a living. These som’bitches are HEAVY. Anyway, I’m still doing a little Snoopy dance. Machines 8 and 9 (not counting MVS carts) have arrived.

Note: I just fired up the Rampage game, and it works great. Video and all. I don’t know what came loose when they moved it, but whatever it was went back together when I moved it here. Go figure!!!