Sunday, February 18, 2018

Goodwill Gold Episode 6: Strat-O-Matic

Hello and welcome to Episode 5 of my Goodwill Gold series. Each Goodwill Goal episode will be about cool things that I find and purchase while adventuring through Goodwill. Today's Episode contains some items that are fairly common but I paid a great price for them and will get some use.




First off I found a complete copy of 2014 Baseball Strat-O-Matic. This copy has all the teams as well as all the dice, charts, etc. Even better than that is that they wanted $3.99 for it but because there was a sale I paid $1.99 for it. To buy this season from Strat-O-Matic it would cost between 50-70 dollars depending if you want the basic set or the additional cards. I was very happy to find this and the price couldn't be beaten.

I also picked up this GE TV/VCR combo. It's just a small 13-inch color TV which came without a remote but I bought it for a couple of reasons. First off, each year more and more of these old CRT TVs stop working and eventually you'll have to pay a pretty penny for one that works. These old 8 bits and 16-bit video games were designed to be played on a CRT. Also, light gun games will not work on modern flat screen TVs so unless you have a CRT you can't play those game.

For those who didn't grow up with these TVs, you'll quickly learn when picking up one that CRT TVs are very heavy. This 13 inch TV actually doesn't weigh too much and is small enough to be able to be moved easily. All of these reasons are important but the most important was the price. The price on the sticker says $3.99 but I actually paid 99 cents for this TV and except for the missing controller this TV works great.


My wife is obsessed with the NES game Tetris which I picked up around the same time as this TV which worked out great because I was able to put this tv on a small table in the living room which my wife can play while someone else can use the regular tv at the same time. You may be thinking, video games on a 13-inch tv sounds crazy but these old games were built to be on TVs like this one and it works very well. I've had, including myself, five people play Tetris on this small TV and they had no complaints. I just need to get around to cleaning this tv and it will be all set.

In the end, I paid a total of 2.98 dollars for this tv and the 2014 Strat-O-Matic game which would have cost me around 300 dollars when they were new. These two will both get some use from me and others but I do find that I have a problem with buying things that I have no use for right now but I really wanted to buy when I was a kid so I end up getting. My wife always asks me why I buy this garbage, in particular this tv, but she's played more Tetris on that small TV than anyone else. You never know what may turn out to be useful so if you have the space to store some of the great finds from Goodwill I recommend you pick them up.


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