Who buys a Genesis for their toddler? Apparently at least one San Francisco parent did, because today's thrift store run began with a whole mess of Sega Club titles. Not to be confused with Club Sega, the arcade chain that the company operates in Japan.
No, Sega Club was a latter-day line of Genesis games aimed at the littlest gamers. These were generally licensed titles like Richard Scarry's Busy Town or Berenstain Bears Camping Adventure, although Crystal's Pony Tale is an original Sega property. Even third-party games could get the Sega Club branding, as evidenced by the Grover game by Electronic Arts, lower left.
But the day didn't stop there: more stuff, and one super awesome find, below.
The best part about the Genesis games was that none of them had price stickers on them, and they were all in a giant bin of VHS tapes, and apparently everything in that bin was 99 cents. Woo! This store's pricing is entirely up to the whims of whoever happens to be going through the donation bins at the time: I've seen Genesis games marked $8.99. At that price the game would have to be pretty amazing, but at a buck I'll buy damn near anything.
As you might imagine, these games were never in especially high demand, but the low production numbers make them rather scarce, as Genesis titles go. The rarest is, as you also might imagine*, the Electronic Arts title rather than the first-party Sega ones. That Grover game is a 5/10 on the Digital Press rarity scale.
Oh, and to round it out, there's Monopoly for Genesis (missing the manual, drat) and Jeopardy for Sega CD. I don't even want to look up the rarity value of the latter as I'm sure it goes into negative numbers.
More stuff. That same Goodwill store turned up a bunch of PlayStation games. Mostly junk, except Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo for $3.50 in mint condition.
On to the next store. There was a bunch of random stuff I didn't bother with: Loose copies of Legacy of the Wizard and Goonies II for NES, a complete Waialae Country Club for SNES (it was $7 and again at that price who cares), and a bunch of Intellivision games with seriously sun-damaged, moisture-damaged, crushed, messed up boxes.
Of the latter, the only two worth buying at $2.50 each were Happy Trails, an uncommon Activision game that was actually in an okay box, and Mouse Trap, a more common Coleco game in a more smashed box. I actually bought it because of the sticker that says "Not For Use With Intellivision II." That had to be a kick in the head, when Mattel released a hardware redesign that didn't work with third-party games. Luckily nobody bought it.
An independent thrift store that has a whole mess of books, records, comics, and such actually didn't turn up many games. In fact it was just a small bin of stuff, with nothing worthwhile except a sealed Vegas Stakes for SNES. I hear this is going to be released on Virtual Console tomorrow, so that would be an interesting coincidence if so. $2.50.
Oh, right. One more thrift store, one that doesn't often turn up much, and I was ready to leave when I saw this – hanging on the wall by the little plastic tab, no less.
"No way," said my brain.
"Way," smiled God.
See how the flash reflects off the box? That's because it's sealed. $6.
