icebluenothing

I picked the thing up in a thrift store for $100 about a decade ago -- the screen didn't work, but it came with a complete set of schematics, and I was confident my dad could find the problem and fix it. Sure enough, he did -- the part that needed to be replaced cost a whopping 89 cents.

I found out from the other documentation that came with it that someone had won it in a contest -- it had never been in an arcade, which explained why the controls and console were in such cherry condition. It was the video-game equivalent of the archetypal car that some little old lady had only driven to church on Sundays.

It had been fun to have, and was a real hit when I brought it along to the Star Trek convention I ran, but for the most part, it's just been taking up space in my parents' garage. While I occasionally daydreamed about having it in a house of my own someday, I had the more realistic expectation that I would really end up trying to sell it on eBay someday.

But now it's gone, and I didn't have to do a lick of work to sell or ship it, so I'm happy. At the back of my mind, I'm a little put out that my parents didn't tell me they were going to try to sell it at this garage sale, that I didn't have a chance to, well, say goodbye to it, and that they didn't discuss price with me -- there's a chance I could have gotten a lot more money than that for it. But you know, on the other hand, there's a chance I might not have been able to sell the damn thing at all, and as it happens, $500 turns out to be exactly the minimum I'd been hoping to get for it, so all my quibbles are minor ones. Hakuna matata.

That's one less major physical object in my life I need to worry about. Cool, cool, cool.