The smell coming from the bucket full of KFC I picked up for the wife and kids was starting to get tempting so I pulled into Thrift Town for couple minutes, hoping to kill a little time and maybe have some serendipity on the game collecting front.
Lo and behold behind the glass counter (where I am routinely ignored for a myriad of reasons) is a boxed, seemingly complete Atari XEGS. I already have one, but not boxed. Serendipity indeed!
Not so fast. The asking price was $100, justified, in the eyes of Thrift Town management, by a printout of this auction, taped to the box, asking for $235 for an XEGS in like condition. In fact, the printout was exactly 30 days old, today, meaning that some giddy schlub in Thrift Town’s sorting area concluded this would be sufficient justification for the $100 asking price and left it out there, unsold, for all this time.
“How much for that bottle of water?”
“Well….a man near death from dehydration after crossing the Kalahari desert on foot would give $1000 for a bottle of water like this. So for you, eh…call it $500. I like your face.”
It’s an all-too-typical, yet still insane, business practice these days: Find the highest possible asking price (not necessarily final bid) on Ebay and apply it to your identical item, regardless of comparative condition. Perhaps it plays in Peoria, but I’ve been around enough to read the fine print. And in this case, the auction for which Thrift Town sought precedence in their pricing closed with zero bids.
“Finally, Thrift Town is playing the Ebay card.” I thought, one hand still sullenly on this beautiful specimen. And then behind the counter again I spotted a lonely little Atari Flashback 2, with no cords or controls, but for which I had been looking for a second unit for a possible mod project. I asked to see it, too, and flipped it over expecting a price tag of $5 to $10.
$35 was the asking price. Popping my eyeballs back into my skull, I looked up at the woman behind the counter and asked if that price was serious. “You bet!”, she said, pointing a long red nail at the Flashback, “Now that’s old school!”
“Believe this or not,” my inner nerd getting the best of me, “This (/pats the XEGS box) is actually older than the Flashback.”
“Nah-ah.” said the counter help. “Nah-ah” has, for many years, been my cue to exit a conversation asap, so I let the misconception die on the vine.
The XE from Ebay has now been relisted, $30 whole cheaper than the first time. Maybe if I print this out and take it there Thrift Town will get a clue that they’ll never sell this thing for what that want. But I’d ofer then a better price , I’m thinking $50. The writing, it should be evident, is on the wall, or rather in the layer of dust built up on this XE.
Tags: Atari XEGS, Thrift Stores
Reminds me of these regular vendors at my local dirt mall, who for the past three years have had the same sunfaded and water damaged “rare” cart-only copies of Super Mario Bros. marked for $15 and never budge on the price.