Friday, July 24, 2009

A Craigslist Score

Or is it?

Yesterday, I drove out to the coast on a lark - I’d seen an ad on Craigslist for a large lot of older D&D stuff that was up for sale. Having the day off, I decided to check it out without even a list of what it was... on the (90 min. drive - it's Oregon, lots of trees!) I began to imagine it was all 3rd Edition stuff, and that I was completely wasting my time and gas. Of course there was another part of me that wondered if maybe there were some buried gems in the collection for sale, and I’d be a fool to miss out on it.

When I got there, a fellow by the name of John greeted me and showed me to a number of boxes sitting on a table. I also saw a stack of magazines on the floor off to the side. Initially, I was under the impression from having emailed John that there were a couple of hundred Dragon magazines that he had, but in fact they all turned out to be Dungeon magazines instead. There was also a lot of 2nd edition D&D material, which was a disappointment. But there was also some 1e AD&D books, over (mostly 1e) 50 modules, a lot of miniatures, and a bunch of miscellaneus items. John was also including his personal campaign data - player characters, a huge hand drawn map, and various notes, by which I was a little intrigued. I struck a deal with him, foregoing any of the Dungeon magazines and buying the rest of the items as one lot.

Honestly, I’m not really interested in most of the things I acquired that day, but some of the 1e books were in better condition than my own, so I upgraded my collection to them as collector's items (I'll tend to use OSRIC instead of them). The modules really seem to be the gems. Over the next couple of days I’ll post lists and maybe some pictures of what I picked up - I think I paid a fair price, but it’s possible I got quite a good deal on a few items (and maybe overpaid drastically for others!)... Hopefully I’ll get feedback here about it - it’d be nice to know if I did well.

2 comments:

Telecanter said...

Great to hear you scored! I love that kind of haul. I remember finding pristine 1e PHB, MM, and Fiend Folio at a Salvation army once for a dollar a piece once.

I guess I'll have to start checking Craigslist.

ze bulette said...

Well, I paid a lot for his old loot, but I think it will still pan out, some of it I'll be selling. I didn't feel comfortable giving him a very low offer and more than once asked him if he was sure he wanted to sell this or that! Nice guy, but he "just couldn't find anyone to play with". Not surprising, given where he lived (outside a state park on the coast of Oregon).

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