Thrill of the hunt and the murder of the hunter!

As an avid video game hunter, I enjoy watching other people make videos of what they've found during their hunting adventures. Its something I wish I could do for both TVG and just for my own personal finds that don't really fit the criteria for TVG. Youtube is rife with people uploading weekly, monthly or just the occasional video of what they've found in flea markets or thrift stores. Even Gamester81 seems to have caught the bug and now has his own finds videos.

But last night, while on my usual youtube "finds" rounds, I saw a video that made something clear that I had never really thought about before. PenguinNintendoAge said he found an SNES game at Goodwill, but it had been a long time since he actually saw a video at Goodwill since they started using their online auction site, because they send all their games to be sold on there. His sentence only sat on my brain for mere seconds before it completely clicked. Goodwill has dried up because they do send all their stuff to be sold online!

I've found very few and far between deals at Goodwill and extremely rarely have I seen vintage games. Recently I bought some NES games from one Goodwill, some Gameboy and GBA games at another, and even a Genesis game at another! But for the most part they are over run with overpriced PS2 and Xbox/360 games. I do understand that it all depends on what is donated, and trust me throughout my adventures I've learned that no matter what you find on a shelf that doesn't mean you're going to find anything more than just that (such as an N64 controller doesn't mean the system or games were donated as well, etc).

Here is where this turns from frustration to anger. Goodwill gets all the good stuff! I'm not even joking, when I started watching ShopGoodwill.com there wasn't a single week go by that they didn't have at least 1 NES 2 (aka Top Loader) listed and sold it for an insane price. So it breaks down that people just dump boxes off at Goodwill and Goodwill makes a huge amount of money off of these things. (100% profit, remember?)

I am dying to get my hands on some pretty rare things that just don't show up in places like Disc Replay or even flea markets, without there being a hefty price tag alongside them. I thought Goodwill was going to be my ticket past this nightmare and I guess I was wrong. In life there are no free rides and nothing comes cheap, Goodwill is really proving that everyday with their business practices.

I have no choice but to keep my eyes open and go to as many Goodwills, and other thrift stores and flea markets as possible, in the hope that I can find what I'm looking for. Now when I look at the lack of video games I'll browse through ShopGoodwill.com and wonder how much of that stuff (sold locally) may have been at my finger tips, had it not been for money hungry Goodwill and their ebay rip off.