What are some of your near misses, hits and/or regrets while collecting?

[Clint Thompson]

For me, I almost had a Sparrow/FX (Falcon) prototype but two things ruled it out for me... it was missing the Blitter chip I believe and the more obvious part probably, the price. At the time I couldn't justify the cost of the thing but sometimes I regret not picking it up. The fact that I've thought back to it a handful of times reinforces said regret.

 

Same thing happened when I was offered an Atari PC1 for $20. I dropped the ball and figured it would just take up space. Now I can't find one to save my life and have kind of been after one off and on for years now.

 

I e-mailed one of the guys who worked on Phear for the Atari Jaguar before Nintendo came in and swooped it up but was about a week too late in my contact time. He had a box full with hundreds of new Phear promo flyers and had no idea what or why to keep them, only to toss the entire bunch out. It's something like that where I wish I could've picked up and distributed freely with paid postage to interested parties/collectors all around.

 

Another time when I was trying to get prototype chips of the Jaguar II from Motorola. They were doing some sort of transition at the time and I had missed their purge by only a month. The lady I had spoken with was very apologetic that she couldn't have helped me sooner. I really enjoyed communicating with some of these people despite the sad news to be had.

[nosweargamer]

The only regrets I have right now is selling my Boxed Jag CD with games, Boxed Sega Nomad and Boxed TG-16 with games.

[Justin]

In 2007 I was offered a working Jag VR headset. The asking price was quite a lot as you might imagine, though the owner was very pleasant to work with. We spoke for about 90 days and couldn't agree on a price, but came within about 20% of each other. I really would have liked for that one to work out. 

 

I was also offered a Jag VR in 2002 for around $1,500. I should have taken it.

[MaximumRD]

Stings to this day, during desperate times selling off my Amiga hardware, a500 and a1200 with various upgrades. Already hard to collect in Canada but these days even IF found on Ebay or elsewhere on line and IF the person is willing to ship to Canada once you add the shipping, import and various duties on top of the prices people are already asking well...............

 

Less so but I still regret, Resident Evil 3 large cardboard standee of Nemesis chasing  Jill Valentine, man that thing was cool. 

[RickR]

Right after I got done with school...around 1990....there was an Egghead Software outlet store in town that was selling Atari Jaguar's for $100 and games were $10 each I think.  Well, I was poor at that point, and passed it up.  Should have bought a full set. 

[fergojisan]

I've gotten rid of a lot of systems and games in the past decade with minimal regret. Anything I had to pass up in the 90s (besides 2600 games) would probably have been sold by now. But I do regret selling my complete 5200 collection. I thought I could get away with just an 800, but it doesn't work that way. One of my listeners generously sent me a couple of bare 5200s and Willie helped me out with the power supply and some games, so I have one again. But there's no way I can spend the money on getting the collection back, I got pretty lucky with some of those games in the 90s.