What do you do if you find 45 of your favorite video game consoles listed for sale on the local classifieds (Kijiji)? Well, you buy them… you buy them all.

Many of the systems you see below do not work for one reason or another. For the ones that do I’m going to clean them up and sell them for a fair price. I want to get them back into the hands of retro gamers. **Yeah, I’m going to pretend that I’m righteous and all that 😛
My other motivation is to have some hardware to work on. I’d love to see if I’m able to repair some or all of the broken consoles.

Those buckets be full!

That’s a lot of Retro.

Both me and these old video game consoles have a long journey ahead of us. I have big plans and I know it will take time.

Will I make any money on this venture? I’m guessing if I do it will not be a lot but at the same time I dove in because the price was right and I don’t think I’m at risk of losing much money either. I paid $180 CAD for everything you see in the bins (I had to give the bins back). So that’s $4 per console! But the lot was sold ‘as is’ and yes many do not work. Before the purchase I estimated that I’d only need about 6 or 8 in working condition to make my original $180 back so it felt like a safe gamble.

Bucket Close-up 01

Bucket Close-up 02

What I was concerned about (which is turning out to be true) is it’s hard to sell loose systems. Most people are going to want a system with a power cable , a video cable and at least one joystick. So I’ve anticipated that this little project will take a long time to complete. But that’s OK and it’s somehow comforting have an army of (mostly) Sega consoles in the basement.

Want to get a better idea of what 45 consoles look like? 🙂 Behold!! Beautiful, isn’t it?

It’s like heaven fell from the stars.

For a loose working system (any Sega Master System, Sega Dreamcast, Sega Genesis or Sega Saturn) I decided to sell each for $30 CAD. Is that a fair price? I think it is except maybe for the Genesis consoles. They are pretty common and I personally believe $20 would be a great price so what does that say about $30? Maybe once I’ve made my money back I’ll considering selling loose Genesis consoles for less… Or Plan B; see below:

This massive heap of consoles actually did come with a bunch of joysticks. But again just like the consoles many do not work. And even if a joystick works I need to be sure it’s working well. However, since some of them are in good order I decided to throw some more money into this venture and buy some third party power and video cables and make a few of these systems whole. Yes, my costs goes up but I think I’ll be able to sell them faster this way. For an additional $160 CAD I managed to buy power and video cables for most of the systems.

I got a good price on the cables at just about $10 for a set (one power cable, one video cable). I valued any good working joystick at $10. So for a complete systems I added in my cost and I’ll sell them for $50 or possibly $60 for those that are in better cosmetic condition or if it comes with a game or something.

I’ve already had these consoles for a few months now and I have made some sales (locally on Kijiji). Slowly but surely it’s happening. So far I’ve sold five consoles and I’ve given away two complete Genesis console to two cousins who I recently found out were into retro gaming. I also gave each of them a flash cart so they’ll have lots to play. Before I bought the flash carts I tried finding cheap loose carts of a few good games and it was so expensive that I just gave up.

Here’s what I’ve sold so far (all in CAD dollars):