My Favourite Colours: Red, Blue and Yellow

One of my collecting goals is not only to collect only for myself, but also for some loved ones that have expressed interest in it.  I have a couple of siblings, but my lovely sister is someone that gamed a bit in her youth alongside me.  Eventually she moved on to sports and other kinds of activities as she got older, but this past summer she became absolutely smitten with Pokemon Go.  I had a long conversation with her about Pokemon based on the little that I personally know about the franchise and probed for any interest she might have in playing the original games for Game Boy, Game Boy Colour, or Game Boy Advance.  She seemed pretty intrigued, and so my quest began to find her some games.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a few copies of Pokemon Gold and Silver but most of my multiples do not save.  We are anxiously awaiting Christmas in hopes of getting some kind of soldering station to start replacing batteries.  I also didn’t want to part with my single copies of Blue, Ruby or Sapphire because I haven’t finished them yet.  I was looking for a starting point, and thankfully the other day an ad popped up online that had just what I was looking for.  Here’s a photo of what I ran across:

This was perfect!  I tested out the games and you’ll never guess what: Gold doesn’t save!!  I don’t know what it is with my luck and Pokemon Gold cartridges, but there has to be some deep-rooted conspiracy here.  Anyway, I’ve decided to give my sister the GBC, my saving copy of Gold or Silver (I’ll hopefully be able to repair the other copies at some point soon enough), and the bad label Blue.  I spoke with her last night, and she was absolutely thrilled.  I’m happy to be able to give the gift of gaming to my loved ones.

What I love most about this lot is how I came to have it.  The guy selling hadn’t listed a price in the ad, so I inquired what he thought he might want to get for everything.  His initial response was $200 which I felt was way too high.  Based on the recent inflation in Pokemon prices though, I wasn’t surprised.  I told him that I wasn’t really willing to pay more than half of his asking price and that the most I wanted to pay was $110.  I had thanked him for his time and thought no more of it, but he emailed me several times and dropped his price down to $130.  After biting my nails, I decided to stick to my guns and be firm, telling him that $110 was the highest I would go.  It took a whole day, but he finally emailed me back and said that I could have it for that price!  Hooray!

Even more exciting is that I now have all three of the first generation Pokemon games.  I already had a nice copy of Blue before I found this lot, but now I can add Red and Yellow to my personal collection.  Also, I can finally stop kicking myself for passing up on Red a few months ago for $20 – it had a really crappy label.  I hate having regrets, but good things come to those who wait [insert other cliches here].

I am really glad to have found these games!  My sister will be able to start her own journey as a Pokemon trainer the way she was originally meant to.  Now if I can just get her to watch the cartoon and like it…

Thanks for reading!

-GG