Auction and second hand treasures

[Rasbelin]

You can find cheap and good new games in the bargain bin, but what have you been able to get at bargain prices or just in general bought from auctions (online/"offline") and as second hand?

I myself have bought several good games from auctions and through Usenet.

- Civ II ToT; as this title has always been rare in Finland, I decided that I'll try to find it outside the country as I don't have the title, so I thought it might be interesting to try it. Well, after hunting a little bit on eBay UK, I did find one seller from the Midlands in UK that was also shipping to Finland, so I bough it as a Buy Now! item and as it was an unwrapped new boxset.

- CtP2; bought it for around 10 € from a Finnish online auction. The nice thing was that it was a complete boxset which was in quite good shape.

- Civ II UCC; the case with this copy still amuses me when I think about it. As my old original Civ II UCC disc started to get abit scratched and my tech map was looking abit torn, I decided to try to find a cheap replacement somewhere, so that when my old disc would become defunct, I would still have a working authentic copy of one of very favourite all tim games. I do have a CD-R backup which I use, but it's still not the same. So I was scouting on Usenet as usually and my eyes noticed that someone was selling a complete Civ II UCC boxset for 10 €, so I decided to buy it as Civ II UCC is quite rare here. Well, that's not the amusing part yet. When I actually received the copy and opened the box, I found several A4 sheets inside it, along with the game. Looking abit closer I noticed that the sheets had notes about how to proceed on the tech advancement. When I turned around I saw a familiar Apolyton logo and noticed that the sheets were actually a printed Civ II strategy topic from the forums, so with the highest probability I had bought the game from a Finnish Apolytoner without knowing it.

In general I can't recall any other good second hand/auctions treasures. Right now I'm bidding for CivNet at 1 €, which is still the winning bid, so I could make a real bargain with that. Unfortunately 1 € was the smallest amount I could bid. Also still looking for a second hand or someone auctioning SMAC and/or Alien Crossfire. It seems to be a rare item, so I might have to wait for quite sometime, unless I start looking at eBay UK. I could get a SMAC DVD case reproduction, but I would like to have the original with the manual.

Good luck to other second hand and auction hunters too.

[Urban Ranger]

Test of Time? Call to Power 2?

Whatever lights your candles.

[lord of the mark]

I bought Talonsoft's Rising Sun used, but it didnt run on my system and i returned it (fortunately i'd bought it at EB before the policy change)

I dont know why a used game would be less likely to run (dont think the disk was defective - the intro movie ran, just the game wouldnt install - IIRC) but having had better luck with bargain new games than with used, im reluctant to buy used games, especially now that i no longer have a retail outlet with an easy return policy.

If i was sure theyd run, id be more likely to buy used. I dont have an ethical problem with it - it still provides indirect support to the game industry, since it makes it a tad less risky to buy a new game knowing there is a second hand market.

I'll probably at some point go to ebay to buy imp 1 , which im interested in and doesnt seem available anywhere else.