Swap Meets

[Mike_302]

Curious who else here is old enough to remember going to old swap meets? I used to have a C64 and every weekend I would take some floppies to the rec center, and everyone would spend the next 4 or 5 hours copying games from one another.

I still remember being grounded for a week when my parents found the copy of "Farmers Daughter" I picked up

[Mike_302]

This should probably be in the computing forum, move it if you could please

[Zap!]

Curious who else here is old enough to remember going to old swap meets? I used to have a C64 and every weekend I would take some floppies to the rec center, and everyone would spend the next 4 or 5 hours copying games from one another.

I still remember being grounded for a week when my parents found the copy of "Farmers Daughter" I picked up

Where do you live, Mike? If you live near Englishtown, NJ, they have the best swap meets there twice a year. Mostly car related, but awesome.

[Zap!]

This should probably be in the computing forum, move it if you could please

Since it's swap meets in general and not specific to computers, I guess I'll move it to Marketplace.

[Rob]

We never had any "real" swap meets where I grew up, but we had the flea market!

Main thing I hated was that they were all so dirty. I went for the games and the comics, but usually it would be some guy that knew nothing about what he was selling trying to sell a sun-bleached copy of an old game or comic for three or four times the going rate. Everything was covered with grime, dust, cigarette smoke, and sweat.

I remember REALLY wanting to replace a TG-16 I had traded in on a SNES. I figured I could snag one for about ten bucks at the flea market, being that they were discontinued and going dirt cheap at the retail stores. Just like now, I was missing Splatterhouse! So I went to the guy that had the game stand and he wanted fifty bucks for an old, beat up TG-16. I tried to tell him you can buy them brand new from Toys R US, bundled with Altered Beast (I think that's what it was) for 19.99. He called me a bastard! I was all of like, nine years old. I really didn't know what to do so I told my sister who went over and cussed him out. He then told her he'd sell the system for twenty bucks- I told him I'd go buy a brand new one for the same price. Long story short, Toys R Us had sold the last of their TurboGrafx systems so I went another fifteen years without owning one!

That's one of my MANY flea market incidents from over the years...

[HiddenGremlin]

We never had any "real" swap meets where I grew up, but we had the flea market!

Main thing I hated was that they were all so dirty. I went for the games and the comics, but usually it would be some guy that knew nothing about what he was selling trying to sell a sun-bleached copy of an old game or comic for three or four times the going rate. Everything was covered with grime, dust, cigarette smoke, and sweat.

I remember REALLY wanting to replace a TG-16 I had traded in on a SNES. I figured I could snag one for about ten bucks at the flea market, being that they were discontinued and going dirt cheap at the retail stores. Just like now, I was missing Splatterhouse! So I went to the guy that had the game stand and he wanted fifty bucks for an old, beat up TG-16. I tried to tell him you can buy them brand new from Toys R US, bundled with Altered Beast (I think that's what it was) for 19.99. He called me a bastard! I was all of like, nine years old. I really didn't know what to do so I told my sister who went over and cussed him out. He then told her he'd sell the system for twenty bucks- I told him I'd go buy a brand new one for the same price. Long story short, Toys R Us had sold the last of their TurboGrafx systems so I went another fifteen years without owning one!

That's one of my MANY flea market incidents from over the years...

My gosh, your childhood experiences sound lovely.

[Mike_302]

Nah not like a flea market per se, was the OLD C64 days where everything was on 5 1/4 floppies, and if you were super cool you had your own notcher and boom suddenly every disk is double sided? High tech indeed lol.

But yeah everyone just copied disks back and forth, in hindsight I have no idea why no one ever complained that it was illegal or anything. But it was a hell of a lot of fun.

[Zap!]

Nah not like a flea market per se, was the OLD C64 days where everything was on 5 1/4 floppies, and if you were super cool you had your own notcher and boom suddenly every disk is double sided? High tech indeed lol.

But yeah everyone just copied disks back and forth, in hindsight I have no idea why no one ever complained that it was illegal or anything. But it was a hell of a lot of fun.

I still have about 50-100 Atari 800 disks with 5-10 games EACH on them. I bought them all with the disk drive for $100 back in the day. Worth every penny, and all were copied.