As Thanksgiving ends, the Christmas holiday season chaos begins. So many different things happen; not only on the day of Thanksgiving, but the days following as well. People continue to stuff themselves with leftovers, football games are watched, ridiculously long lines form at stores for the biggest Black Friday deals, even though many of them open on Thursday these days. People hang their Christmas decorations and video games are auctioned off. Wait! What?
The pavilion at Adventureland Park in Altoona, IA is transformed from a banquet hall into a giant arcade, where hundreds of used (and sometimes new) video games and pinball machines are auctioned off starting at $1, with some reaching thousands of dollars!
The same type of auction happens again at the same location in March. The auction at the beginning of the year is normally during the Easter weekend and that reigned in great profits. As a result, they will keep the Easter sale timeframe.
This year’s auction marks the 30th Thanksgiving that Tom Rhoades, who is the owner of the Arcade Amusement Auctions (and also a traveling carnival owner and operator) has been holding these auctions. His very first auction was held at a roller skating rink and it was a great success. There were about 160 pieces auctioned off and he did the entire auction by himself. Read the rest of the article here from Old School Gamer
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Brad has been a die hard arcade fan ever since he can remember. From the first time he played Space Invaders, to the first time he played Pacman, Brad has always had a love for video games. Hanging out at either the Great American Fun Factory in the mall, or spending the night in front of the glowing games at the local roller rink, he was always thinking about when he can spend the next quarter. He also worked at Babbages, which is now GameStop, for over six years. Mostly because they had a really sweet checkout policy on new products and great discounts. But since he had the Atari 2600, he has never looked back and owned some of the greatest home machines, NES, SNES, GENESIS, Turbo Graphix 16, GameBoy, Game Gear, Lynx, Playsation 1,2,3,4 and Vita, XBOX, Gamecube, and N64...just to name a few. Brad is also a reviewer for Mobile Beat Magazine as well as a freelance videographer, part time disc jockey, performing artist and photographer. But has a true love is for video games and Star Wars, as he is a member of the 501st Central Garrison. His ultimate dream is to own a fully working pinball machine and arcade machine. Difficult to say which one, but a Star Wars one would be nice start.
