Garage Sale / Thrift Store finds

[Dyson Logos]

Today was the "Great Glebe Garage Sale" - a community garage sale in one of the nicer residential parts of downtown Ottawa. Having had success at previous Glebe sales (I scored a copy of Cyborg Commando for $3 two years ago), I loaded up with my backpack and hit the neighborhood at 7 am to see what I could find.


$20 later, I'm home with two Top Secret / S.I. boxes in my backpack. Two very heavy Top Secret / S.I. boxes. Heavy because they are full of books, far more than just the core game and the High Stakes expansion (basically the Monte Carlo & Vehicle expansion for the game).

Box 1 - the Top Secret / S.I. box

• Top Secret / S.I. core books (player & administrator books ; equipment & adventure booklets)
• Dungeons & Dragons Mentzer 1983 Basic Rules (player & DM books)
• Palladium's "Compendium of Weapons, Armour & Castles"
• All the vehicle "cards" for the High Stakes boxed set (like the GDW 2nd edition of Twilight 2000, this game came with a pile of material printed on lightweight card - in this case, a bunch of stat sheets for cars, boats, planes and bikes and so on, over a half-inch thick of them)
• A folder with a hand-stenciled "TOP SECRET" logo containing seven Top Secret / S.I. characters and two Villains & Vigilantes characters.
• Blueprint style map from the TS/SI game
• Monaco Map from the High Stakes box
• Bunch of blank character folders

Box 2 - the Top Secret / S.I. High Stakes box

• Top Secret / S.I. - Guns, Gadgets & Getaway Vehicles supplement
• Top Secret / S.I. - High Stakes books (3 booklets - Monte Carlo, Grand Prix & Adventures)
• Top Secret / S.I. - Freelancers book (basically a near-future superspy supplement for TS/SI)
• Top Secret / S.I. - Administrator's Screen
• 1 AD&D2e character (level 7 human fighter)
• 1 AD&D1e character (level 1 human cleric)
• 1 Plastic Cow
• 1 "limousine" graph paper booklet (roughly 5" by 8" booklet full of five-rule graph paper)

and then the pay dirt... I hadn't dug through the boxes completely when I bought them, so I only noticed these when I got home.

• Top Secret Companion (expansion rules for the original Top Secret game, not /S.I.)
• Operation Sprechenhaltestelle (first adventure for the original Top Secret game)
• Top Secret Administrator's Screen

and the piece de resistance...

• Top Secret RPG, Second Printing

I'm a Top Secret junkie. What pains me is that while I learned the game with the second printing, the copy I owned until now was the first printing which has inferior layout and still uses Wrestling Rating instead of subsuming it into the HTH rating. So I finally got (one of) my Holy Grail(s) - the second printing of the first edition Top Secret RPG. I am geeked right the heck out.

Have any awesome thrift shop or garage sale scores to reminisce about?

 

[malraux]

I just grabbed an AD&D MM2 at a yard sale today. They had a ton of old DnD choose your own adventure games as well, but I just couldn't justify adding that to my collection.

 

[Crothian]

Last fall I paid 5 bucks for a d6 box set that had about 15 other d6 modules in it as well. But around here books at Garage Sales seem to be really rare since most people just sell them at the Half Price Books stores.

 

[Richards]

I started buying Dungeon in the mid 40s or so (issue numbers, that is -- not years!). I then found a bunch of old Dungeon issues in the back-issue bin of a comic shop -- somebody had just dumped their entire complete collection, and the owners hadn't decided how to price them yet. So they sold them to me for cover price.

And boom, in one fell swoop, I suddenly had a complete copy of every issue of Dungeon (one that I maintained for the duration of its existence as a print magazine).

Johnathan

 

[Silversun]

After 4E was announced I managed to pick up every title in th the Mongoose Quintessentail line for only $100. Best deal I ever got.

 

[Crothian]

After 4E was announced I managed to pick up every title in th the Mongoose Quintessentail line for only $100. Best deal I ever got.

How many books is that?

 

[Mark]

I picked up the complete Alternity Adventure Game: StarCraft Edition (tabletop game) at a garage sale last weekend, as well as some other goodies. My town holds a yearly weekend to kick off the garage sale season with over 500 sales. I use the three day weekend to get in some great walks and get more familiar with the town.

 

[Gunton The Terrible]

Nice deal on the Top Secret score. But I think you get ripped off on the Cyborg Commando. I barely remember that game and all my memories of it are bad to unimpressed.

 

[jdrakeh]

Back when I lived in Topeka, KS I answered an ad in the classifieds of the Capital Journal that listed "magic cards and a few books" for sale. I drove up to a nearby town to look at the lot. It ended up being about five milk crates and three cardboard boxes full of assorted roleplaying stuff including:

• A copy of every AD&D 1e hardcover ever published by TSR, many in NM condition.
• Dozens of D&D adventure modules, including several rarities.
• An ElfQuest box set in NM condition.
• Signed pieces of Brom artwork.
• Several dozen sets of dice.

All for. . . $75. It took me weeks to catalogue all of the stuff. I can't recall all of what was in the boxes today (or even most of it), but it I do recall that it was a great deal and a whole Summer's worth of fun for me.

 

[possum]

I've had quite the luck with garage sales in the past few years.

Three boxed sets (Forgotten Realms, Menzo., and Planescape) in complete and good condition.
Numerous 3.X hardcovers and Dragon/Dungeon magazines (Epic, Psionics, Fiend Folio, Book of Exalted Deeds just to name a few.)
Pretty much all the first and second edition core books
Shadowrun 2nd Edition
A couple adventure modules

They've all been pretty cheap, with the 3.X books and magazines (one big lot at a sale) being the most expensive, costing $30. Boxed sets usually cost me about $2.