Enrico Ricciardi, also known as LordBritishDragon, was recently caught selling fake copies of rare Ultima and Sierra games, with a trail of suspicious activity that goes back almost a decade. The details are available in a Google Doc, with detailed photographs and notes on how the fakery was identified, mostly by comparing the materials and printing techniques against known originals, and the fact that the disks/cassettes were either blank or had non-game material recorded on them, in a callback to the Eyal Katz forgeries.

It's sickening to me that we can't trust other collectors, but once again greed has brought out the worst in one of our own. If you have ever traded or purchased rare items from Enrico Ricciardi, you should consider your items highly suspect, especially if they are ultra-rare pieces (Akalabeth, Escape from Mt Drash, early Sierra Hi-Res Adventures). And if you're considering buying anything like this... unfortunately you're taking your chances. Ask lots of questions. Where the seller got it from. Where that person got it from. Detailed pictures of everything.

For the record, I consider a small number of Eyal Katz sympathizers from back in the day to be partially responsible for this. Their hassling me on the old SWCollect forum every time I refused to trust Katz may have contributed to Enrico realizing he could get away with it too.

Apologies for the long hiatus. The Shoppe is back open now, albeit with one major change: The automated offer acceptance feature has been disabled. All offers, cash or trade, now need to be manually approved by the Shoppekeeper. The reason for this is that I discovered a few too many people using me as a cheap source for items they could flip in auctions, similar to what happened with BetterThanTheBay after I first launched it. I don't always have the time to keep up with price fluctuations, and it started to feel like I would quickly get taken advantage of whenever a spike occurred.

New year, fresh start, so I won't go on yet another rant about the evils of The Auction Site Which Must Not Be Named, but I am going to start putting more emphasis on selling to other collectors, rather than resellers. Resolutions and all that. If it helps, think of it as me placing less trust in automated technology. That's a good theme for 2022, I think, as we collectively slide further along the dystopian timeline.

Lots of new items are listed, including a few BetterThanTheBay auctions, so please take a look and let me know if anything interests you.

P.S. Please give a belated welcome to Purry and Bug, the new official mascots of the Shoppe, replacing Beandip who departed in late 2020.

Item stock and pricing are up to date, though I still have a few minor corrections to make on the back end. In the coming weeks I'll be listing everything I've accumulated since the start of the downtime (the longest in the site's history I believe).

Attention, Paul V:

I've been getting up before dawn, kind of like Hemmingway except I don't end up drunk before noon. Restocking the shelves was like defragmenting a hard drive -- It's amazing how much free space I have now that I've compacted everything and the shelves are only slightly overflowing. I'll be listing new stuff in the coming weeks. Or possibly months, let's be realistic here.

There's still some clutter, and I'm looking to unload some of it in bulk. Does anyone have any interest in a big box of nothing but The Third Courier by Accolade? Or perhaps a smaller box of National Lampoon's Chess Maniac 5 Billion and One? Or what about a load of miscellaneous educational, sports and shovelware games? I'd give you a big discount on the first two, and send the third for the cost of shipping and PayPal fees just so it's not in my house or a landfill.

If you haven't seen Ready Player One yet, it's pretty entertaining, although they did have to make a lot of changes from the book to make it palatable to a film audience. It's not fun watching someone else play Zork, especially after you bought an $8 popcorn to do it. That's probably why nobody streams text adventure games on Twitch. (Or do they? I don't know, I never watch Twitch.)

Anyway. One Zork reference they did keep in was the famous Personal Software "barbarian" cover art. And you'll never believe where they got it. That's right, their production team must have searched for it and found the Shoppe, because they personally contacted me to loan them one so that their set decorators could create a realistic prop for the film. You can see it briefly in the scene at the end where Wade Watts "meets" Halliday in his childhood room. Look at the left side of the screen in the shot when you can see the old computer, it's right next to it. My name is even in the credits under "Special Thanks"!

That's why it took so long for me to get around to listing that last one on BetterThanTheBay. I had to wait for them to send the original back.

Part of the problem has been my camera. Anyone recommend a good point-and-shoot digital camera that doesn't cost a fortune? The one I have now is a Sony CyberShot DSC-W830, and it kind of stinks. For some reason I just can't get it to take pics that show the items in good detail. It's supposed to be 20 megapixels but the picture quality is nowhere near as good as the old 6.2mp HP PhotoSmart I was using for years until it stopped working and of course they don't make them anymore. I'm not a photographer and I don't wish to become a photographer. I just want something I can aim at an item I'm selling, press the button, and it takes a picture that isn't total crap. Suggestions are welcome.

Anyway, I took a week-long trip to upstate New York (paid a little extra and risked a tight connection at O'Hare to avoid a stopover in Detroit), and one of the prominent stops was the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester. I spent a full day in their archives, going through the internal Sierra On-Line materials on loan from Ken and Roberta Williams themselves, my excited collector hands in white cotton gloves so I wouldn't drip sweat all over the unique documents. I got to read some of Roberta's original design notes on the early King's Quest games, The Black Cauldron, The Colonel's Bequest, and the master shooting script for Phantasmagoria complete with notes and excised scenes. They also had a letter to the Williamses from Steve Wozniak, some photos of the Sierra founders from the company's early days, and a rare copy of the single-issue On-Line Newsletter from June 1981 (which I can't help pointing out that mine is in better condition).

I took photos of some of it, and most of them came out acceptable even with my low-end point-and-shoot. Unfortunately they have you sign an agreement that any pictures are for your personal use and won't be distributed elsewhere, so I can't post the zip for download here, but if anyone stopping by the physical Shoppe wants to take a look I'd gladly share them in person. The Strong is pretty protective of the materials it hosts - In addition to the aforementioned archival gloves, I wasn't allowed to use any ink pens (pencil only, which they provided) and had to disable the flash on my camera. Other than that they pretty much left me to myself to pore over the materials. I found the lighting at the viewing tables to be adequate but it's a little better directly above the reception counter, so I carried a few of the more interesting pieces over there to photograph them.

If you're going to be in that area I highly recommend making time to see all of this yourself. You can find their list of available materials and make arrangements to see them on The Strong's library page. Julia Novakovic is the archivist I worked with; let her know I sent you, and I'd be happy to provide you with the materials list I put togehter to save you the time of recreating it yourself. I suggest allocating at least two days - I spent so much time in the archives that I only had about an hour left to enjoy the museum itself, which showcases a staggering number of toys and games from the 1800s to the present. In the display cases I spotted a couple of Infocom folios and some other titles that I've had in the Shoppe. It's heartening to know that people care about these games enough to include them in a museum.

Jon-Paul Dyson, one of the other curators, told me that they had just received all of Brian Fargo's design notes and were still in the process of cataloguing them, so I may be taking another trip back in a couple of years to examine those. The museum even had a copy of the rare 1981 Saber Software release of Demon's Forge which was Fargo's first game, which explains why such an obscure title was so prominently featured. It was in pristine condition, so it was almost certainly an unsold copy Fargo himself had held onto over the years, similar to the unnumbered extra copies of Akalabeth that Richard Garriott gave away to a few people a decade or so ago.

The rest of the trip involved a drive across the state to see a friend, stopping at every retro game store and game-themed business I could find along the way. I ended up mailing three boxes of stuff back to myself, not much of it particularly rare or valuable, but things I couldn't pass up at that price. Just before I flew out I received a bunch of buy-one-get-one-free Subway coupons, so I took them along and ate as cheaply as I could, subsisting on a diet almost exclusively of Subway sandwiches. Exactly like Jared except for the secretly being a child molester part. In Rochester I do suggest the Swillburger, a combination arcade/bar set up in what used to be a church. (I don't normally post sociopolitical views here but I've long felt this country needs fewer churches and more game-related businesses.) The game selection was decent, though not as big as the Analog Arcade Bar in the Quad Cities and nowhere near Galloping Ghost in Brookfield. They did have the best fried chicken sammich I've had in a while.

If you're planning a trip to The Strong next year or in 2019, let me know your schedule and maybe we can meet up. I've heard Stanford has the bulk of the Infocom collection so I'd like to eventually check that out as well. I'm also going to Midwest Gaming Classic again in April.

There's one other thing coming out this year that I want to post about... but I can't just yet. As soon as I get the okay from the lawyers I'll announce it here.

I've essentially accomplished what I was hoping to do this year. The Vault is up to date, with the exception of a few boxes of non-game items that don't fit easily on my shelves, and the rest of the Langosy items I still need to pick through. And I'd like to take an updated picture but there's still a bit too much stuff in the way. My 2017 goal (I won't use the "R" word) is to get my wanted list current again. I think it's been a good decade since I touched it last.

Does anyone know of a place that sells acid-free plastic storage bags larger than 16.25 x 10.5? Those are sometimes called "treasury bags" and are the largest size I've ever found, but I have a few oversized items (Starcross saucer, Suspended mask box and the Digital Infocom folio releases for DECmate and DEC Rainbow) that don't fit them.

I've heard from two people for whom the Shoppe site is not working at all. They say that no matter what page they try to access, they only get a blank browser window. I have not been able to reproduce this issue. If you encounter it, please let me know at yois@if-legends.org. (Might want to grab that address and save it somewhere in case this starts happening to you.)

Recently I played through the King's Quest reboot and had a pretty good time with it. It was obvious the developers loved the original series, and they worked in a lot of obscure references, my favorite being the "impossible riddle" which I assume refers to guessing the old gnome's name in the first game. And it may be just my imagination, but I swear the blacksmith lady was modeled after how Roberta Williams looked in the 1980s. It was a nice blend of traditional LucasArts-style point and click and the choice-driven narratives popularized by Telltale.

I realize that serial games tend to get some criticism because the choices players make don't truly affect the direction the story takes, but I tend to view them the same way as real life: In cosmic terms, nothing we do matters. In a few billion years the sun will bloom into a red giant and either scorch or entirely engulf the earth, the universe will continue without us, and it won't matter what we did in our lives. But it has meaning to us now, as we're living them. I see Telltale games as being like that. Your choices are important to you when you first play the game. It's only after you start looking at the big picture of how the game works that you realize you didn't really have that much of an impact. (I know some people who can't bring themselves to play those games more than once, because they feel it would cheapen the decisions they made.) Even the text parser games of yore followed a predetermined plot.

I keep hoping someone will eventually do something interesting with the Zork IP. It would be a shame to have its last gasp be a crappy free-to-play browser game.

AAA? More like FFF.

In August, following a reasonably successful Saturday of vintage game hunting in the west Chicago suburbs, wherein I scored an Infocom Science Fiction Classics triple pack (in the wild!) I went to meet my cousin for breakfast on Sunday morning, and my car broke down. Specifically, a U-joint on the front axle broke, rendering my 15-year-old Focus solidly undriveable.

I was a AAA member - emphasis on "was" - so I called them for a tow. AAA told me that the nearest garage that was open on a Sunday was 13 miles away and that there would be a surcharge because of the distance. I agreed to this, since it meant my car would at least be looked at that day, and possibly fixed soon enough to still get me home at a decent time, if I was lucky. But then you would have missed out on yet another tale of me receiving crappy customer service when I needed help the most.

It turned out that, even though I was told the garage was open that day, it was only the oil change mechanic on duty. There was no one there who could do more advanced repairs. Naturally I was pissed, because the only reason I chose to have the car towed 13 miles to that particular station was because I was led to believe that "open" meant there was somebody there who could actually look at my car. I don't think that was an unreasonable assumption on my part. (Is a restaurant "open" if there is someone there to walk you to a table and fill your water glass, but no one to cook food?)

So I ended up wasting $40 on a tow I didn't need and then piddling around half the day until someone actually bothered to tell me that there was no one who could help me. Ultimately my choices came down to: (1) leave the car there, spend money on a motel room, and wait for them to start working on it the next day, missing at least one day of work, possibly two, at my new job where I really didn't want to miss any work that soon after just starting it. (2) Rent a car and drive back home, except then I'd have to drive the rental car back, pick up my car, and drive my car back again, six additional hours of driving I didn't really have time for. Or (3) pay for a tow of my busted Focus all the way back to Peoria, which is the one I went with.

It was the least shitty of three extremely shitty options, and it wasn't cheap. Cost almost as much to tow it as it did to have it repaired. But I finally got back around six that night and got the car fixed two days later. (My mechanic place actually had mechanics.) And I was able to salvage some of the total cost. My insurance covers me for tows up to a certain amount, and I pestered AAA enough to reimburse me for the original $40 tow, plus the portion of the second tow that was due to their fuckuppery - they towed me 13 miles further away from Peoria, so I reasoned / nagged them into paying for 13 miles of the tow back.

But negative first impressions are very hard for me to shake off, and as a result (do I even need to say it?) I'm not a AAA member anymore. They've been sending me mail trying to get me to renew, and to sign up for their line of insurance, and I've been sending them back stamped with a middle finger shaped rubber stamp I acquired from a co-worker at a previous job. I call it the "birdie stamp." Real mature, I know. But it makes my feelings feel better.

If you're a AAA member, this could happen to you. It probably won't, and I hope it doesn't. But it could. Consider yourself cautioned.

The Most Expensive Free Game Console Ever

This one is shorter, I promise.

Literally five minutes before the car broke down, I had passed a house with a bunch of bags and boxes out on the curb, like the remnants of a garage sale that the owner didn't want to bother dumping off at Goodwill. Now I'm not above a little trash-pickin', and I could see from my driver's seat that the pile had an old game console in it. So I pulled up, got out, nabbed the console and spent a little more time going through the rest of the pile, but didn't find anything else. At the very next traffic light was when the car crapped out.

So, even though it was pure coincidence, in my mind I can't help thinking of it as the most expensive free game console I ever acquired. Still, I was able to sell it at the local flea market to recover a bit more of the car repair bill.

Various and Sundry Items

• I went to Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 11.0 back in September and found some goodies, some of which will be listed here. There were several Infocoms, incomplete but cheap, that I almost bought up but wanted to look around a bit more first. When I went back later, somebody else had nabbed them, but I got a few things they didn't get! Spent a good half hour rummaging through a box of PDP materials. Still hoping to find a PDP-11 Zork some day.


• The server on which YOIS is hosted recently underwent a migration. Everything seems to be working fine, but please email me if you encounter any issues.


• I've finally had the time and energy to work on the Vault some more. Going through the Infocom shelves now, listing new stuff I've acquired (even though "new" in some cases doesn't really apply anymore). After that I've got my cassette games, several shelves and boxes of uncatalogued items, and ultimately my personal want list. Oh, and maybe a new picture, as the current one is from my old apartment which I haven't lived in for almost 10 years!

I realized the exact same thing could happen to me again, at any time, without any warning, so I decided I was done with eBay. But I'm obsessive-compulsive and I mentally need closure, so I took steps to permanently delete my account. Due to eBay's incompetence, this took much longer than it should have, and eventually to amuse myself I started messing with the eBay support staff, wasting their time. The art of eBaiting was born. (Like scambaiting, but with eBay.) The concept never really took off like I had hoped it would, but I've maintained a steady trickle of emails from similarly dissatisfied eBay users over the years.

This is the important stuff: In honor of the 10th anniversary of eBaiting, Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe is having a special 10% off sale. The sale begins on October 26th, the 10-year anniversary of the day I originally put in the request to close my account, and ends on May 14th, 2017, the 10-year anniversary of the day my eBay account was finally closed. So, a 200-day sale. (Suck it, Black Friday!) The 10% discount applies only to the price of items where you make an offer which is automatically accepted by the Shoppe. That is, it does not apply to items where you make a lower offer and I later accept it manually, does not apply to item-for-item trades, does not apply to shipping costs, and does not apply to any BetterThanTheBay auctions... of which I do still have a number to list. Damn, the last few months have been distracting. The discount will be in the form of a PayPal refund, because that functionality isn't built into the site, and I haven't had time to code it.

You can read the full letter on the EFF's page. Special thanks to author and EFF activist Cory Doctorow for helping consumers fight back against this sort of nonsense. Remember, never buy digital, only physical, because if you "buy" digital you don't actually own it.

Speaking of time, please spend yours doing something else if you're the nardtard who keeps spamming me "Documents from work" and "Scanned image from copier" emails with the YOIS address spoofed. I'm never gonna fall for it. I don't send work stuff to my YOIS address, ever. If you really want to get me, send me an email whose subject says... OH HO HO, nice try! Almost had me there you clever bastard you.

The reason I didn't go follows in my proud tradition of sharing way more personal medical info than most of my readers probably want to know. (Side note? Look at the date on that post, and then Google the date Facebook was originally founded. I was needlessly sharing personal details online well before the rest of the world started doing it.) My MGC absense was caused by a kidney stone that's been plaguing me for the past month. When the pain first hit - and I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone, not even Eyal Katz - the stone was identified as being 4mm in length and I was told that it would probably eventully pass. Over the next month I had about one flare-up a week, lasting no more than an hour, and I took painkillers to deal with those. I was planning to live with it until the stone passed normally.

Yesterday the pain hit, worse than ever, and it didn't go away. So I spent the night in the E.R. while they gave me a series of IV drips to try and flush the stone out. When it was still there this morning, they wheeled me up to surgery, where they performed a "ureteroscopy with laser lithotripsy" which is basically medical-speak for "They stuck a laser up my dick... and played Asteroids."

So that ended up being my classic gaming experience this weekend. I was the Asteroids cabinet. Fortunately, the doctors got the high score.

*sigh* It looks like the USPS's postage calculator is fighting with YOIS again. If it's quoting international shipping options for $0.00 or between $2 - $3, that's obviously not right. Let me know if this happens to you. So far it seems to be confined to Canada destinations. I'm looking into a fix.

Update: Okay I give up for now. I have an email in to their support.

I've identified the source of the problem: At some point the international rate calculator API started expecting the origin and destination postal codes for packages going to Canada. When I try to make an API call with a Canada destination, I get this error:

"The element 'Package' has invalid child element 'OriginZip'."

But if I leave OriginZip out, I am told:

"OriginZip is required when DestinationPostalCode and AcceptanceDateTime are populated."

And if I leave out DestinationPostalCode and AcceptanceDateTime, that's what leads to the $0.00 Priority Mail quote. So at this point my best guess is that it's a problem with the XML elements being in the wrong order. I've experienced that before, with the length-width-height issue a couple of years ago, which came dangerously close to making me mentally ill. I've said this before, but I despise the USPS's poorly-documented API. It is a beast of a bear of a BITCH to work with.

I fixed a couple of minor issues with the site, including a bug that was preventing some BetterThanTheBay user pages from displaying properly.

Things are finally starting to return to normalcy for me. I got a refund from the U.S. Postal "Service" for the damaged N64, though I had to file another credit card company dispute to get the postage back. In my claim I equated the USPS's actions - breaking an item they delivered and still charging me for the delivery - to a hypothetical restaurant where the server dropped my meal on the floor and then expected me to pay for it anyway. The credit card company ruled in my favor. Useful analogy to remember if you ever find yourself faced with this situation.

There's another set of API changes coming from the U.S. Postal "Service", and I doubt I'll have time to do any testing before they go live. So if you get an error on the Shoppe's postage page, let me know and I'll weigh and quote manually until I can get a fix in. Wouldn't be the first time.

The quotes around "Service" are there because I have another story about them. So, did you know that the USPS can refuse to issue a refund if they overcharge you on postage? It's true. This happened during the Three Days of Icy Darkness, when the power went out and it was freezing. I had absolutely nothing else I could do, so I walked to the post office to mail a package -- I've had a lot of trouble with my garage door this year and didn't want to risk anything going wrong again by opening it manually to get my car out.

Anyway, I found out one of the automated kiosks at my post office had the scale incorrectly calibrated, and it was adding a few extra ounces. Unfortunately I didn't find out until after I'd already paid for and printed the postage. This was after-hours, so the next day I walked back again -- power still out -- and was told by the friendly uniformed cuntshrew that there were no refunds on postage... even though their machine was in error! I disputed the difference (not the full amount, that would be dishonest) with my credit card company, and they gave me an instant and automatic credit. Thank you, 800+ credit score.

Still waiting on the insurance claim for an N64 I sold and shipped that got smashed up in transit. When the buyer initially took it to his post office, they tried to tell him it wasn't insured... despite the fact that ALL Priority Mail now includes $50 in insurance, and I have the receipt specifically saying it did! Dirty, filthy, stinking, rotten, lying liars telling lies.

Between that and the holidays, I know I'm not going to have time to prep and mail a bunch of additional packages, so I've set aside the auctions for now. (You may have noticed that the last set ended with no bids at all. That's partly because I didn't have time to promote them like I normally do.) Once things settle down, hopefully early next year, BetterThanTheBay will be back, with that Personal Software Zork I've been mentioning for so long.

The second issue was, my digital camera died. So before I could take any more pictures of auction items, I had to research and find a new one I liked. I ended up going with a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W830 (man the cameras these days have catchy names) since it's an easy to use point-and-shoot, wasn't expensive and takes decent quality pictures, especially compared to the old HP PhotoSmart R717.

New Shoppe items are now posted for sale (scroll down), and I'll get to BetterThanTheBay soon. I promise.

And since the holidays are barreling toward me faster than I'd like, here are the USPS's cutoff dates for guaranteed Christmas delivery:

• Domestic (U.S.):
  • Parcel Post: December 15
  • Priority Mail: December 21
  • Express Mail: December 22
• International:
  • Priority Mail: December 11
  • Express Mail: December 15

Back in the 1980s, there were two computer game creation tools into which I sunk months of my childhood: There was Broderbund's Lode Runner, which came with its own easy-to-use level editor. I'm pretty sure I figured out every possible trick that could be done in that game. Some of my levels were even harder and more intricate than the ones in Championship Lode Runner. The second tool was Adventure Construction Set, which let you create tile-based adventure games with some light RPG elements, everything from items, obstacles and creatures to redoing the graphics themselves if you wanted to.

There are other modern equivalents of course, but none of them have been as satisfying for me. The RPG Maker series for PS1/PS2 was too limiting for my taste. I find LittleBigPlanet too clunky to use with a game controller. I just couldn't get into Terraria for whatever reason. And I can't play Minecraft because the low-res textures at 60 FPS give me a mild form of motion sickness. So Mario Maker is my choice. If anybody wants to swap levels or friend codes, you know what to do.

Side note, does anyone know if the Rivers of Light game included with ACS was actually winnable? I recall one puzzle with a mouthless spirit, and you had to get it to speak in order to learn what to do next. Using ACS itself to peer into the inner workings of the game, I found a "mouth" item defined in the object library, and I remember systematically searching every square of every room of every area, trying to determine where in the game it was located, and never found it. 25 years later, this is still bothering my OCD-ravaged mind, and it seems to be the one classic game for which no complete walkthrough exists.

Anyway. The Shoppe is open again, and I'll try to get a few BetterThanTheBay auctions posted in the coming week. I know several of you are eager for the chance to win that last Personal Software Zork. I also have some regular sale items to catalogue and list.

Probably the biggest collecting difficulty I have these days is the lack of a consistent, reliable source. I just don't find the stuff in the wild like I used to in the days of Cyber Exchange and Software ReRuns, and I've willingly closed off certain... "venues" to myself. So I post a lot of online classifieds asking for vintage software, and sometimes I get a bite. Recently I got an offer that seemed too good to be true, and you know what they say about those. Here's the picture they sent me. Go ahead and click it for a better view.

Wow. Cue unearthly angelic choral music rising in the background. Personal Software Zork (the Apple version!), Space Gamer magazine #28, May/June 1980, with the Denis Loubet demon Akalabeth artwork, California Pacific Akalabeth... and below that it sure looks like one of the dozen or so handmade copies that Richard Garriott sold as a teenager through the Texas computer store where he worked... or at least one of the leftovers he sold a couple of decades later. Any serious collector would beg, borrow or cheat honest bidders for the opportunity to own this lot.

Except, here's the full message that accompanied it:

Note the liberal use of emoji and the blatant blabbing of family dysfunction that, if real, would seem a bit too personal, such as the reference to CPS (that's Child Protective Services)... To me it lends the whole thing an air of deliberately constructed wackiness that makes it hard to take seriously. I'm no stranger to collector pranks, having engaged in them myself.

On the other hand, the picture wasn't lifted from a current auction, and a Google image search did not turn up a source. My scrutinizing eyes could detect no Photoshop at play here. The items do not appear to have been cut-and-pasted together, they overlap each other and appear to all have existed in the same place at the same time when the photo was taken. In particular, the stripes on the pillow, visible through the CPC Akalabeth plastic bag, would have been difficult for an amateur to pull off. I suppose the image could have been saved from a long-expired auction that would no longer show up in search results, but who would go to that much trouble? (Does anyone else recognize it?)

So I wrote back, careful not to get my hopes up. I was honest (always try to be) and informed him that the Zork and Castle Wolfenstein were easily worth three figures, and the Akalabeths probably four figures each. I told him that they are seen for sale infrequently enough that it can be difficult to put a definite price on them. I asked him about the origins of the self-published Akalabeth, if he knew where and when "Dad" had obtained it. And I let him know that I'm a dealer as well as a collector, so if he sold to me I would make an offer based on, but somewhat less than, what I would expect them to resell for (sort of like an estate sale broker or a consigner who takes care of pricing and selling things in exchange for a percentage, except I typically pay in advance, before anything is sold), and that if it turned out one or more of them went for a much larger amount than what I paid him for them, I would split the extra with him. I requested larger pictures of the individual items, mostly to serve as proof that he actually had them, though I didn't say that, and asked if I could meet and inspect them personally, since it seemed unlikely that this individual with (possibly) an Original-12 Akalabeth just happens to reside in the Peoria area. I mean, what are the odds? I couldn't do an IP check on the email, as it gets routed through a Craigslist exchange for privacy.

His reply, the following day (curiously emoji-free):

Fair enough on the reselling, although it does make me wonder why he didn't simply auction them to begin with. In the past, some people have sold me collections they don't want to mess with selling piecemeal on their own. If you're wondering why I laid all my cards on the table and told him I'd be reselling, it's because (1) I was already pretty convinced this was a prank, and (2) even if it wasn't, I wasn't keen on dropping several thousand dollars on things I would just turn around and resell. With the Infocom lot there were enough pieces going into my own collection to justify it, but I already have a manual for the PS Zork and didn't want to drop that much cash just to obtain a disk, and I'm not an Ultima / Akalabeth collector. I was actually sort of hoping he'd go the online auction route, just so I could see if it was real. If you're wondering why I didn't try to lowball the guy, it's because (1) honesty is important to me, and (2) since I half-suspected it wasn't real, I considered that it might be someone testing my honesty. I've done that before as well.

Other pieces of the exchange that don't quite fit: He doesn't even address my suspicion that it's a prank. Most serious sellers, and most serious scammers for that matter, would try to convince the person that they are in fact for realsies. Then there's the paranoia over meeting in person, although that's somewhat understandable, but I suspect he's exaggerating or misquoting about the shooting and carjacking IN an actual Walmart parking lot. I couldn't find an actual news article, but Walmart incidents have a tendency to spread across the Internet, at least in America, to the point where it's kind of impossible to miss hearing about them. And there's the mention of "Ma" again... Doesn't she let Gregorie and Bobbie have their own eBay and PayPal accounts? How old are these people anyway?

I did write him one more reply wherein I recommended listing the items individually instead of as a single lot, and cautioned him against the backdoor bidders making an offer that sounded good, but would in actuality be significantly less if he just let the auctions run their course. I haven't heard back, and as of this writing the games have yet to turn up on any auctions. If you do see it, please let me know. (Don't worry, I'm not gonna bid against you. It's eBay, remember?)

So, what does everyone think?

One guy beat me by seconds to a decently-priced pair of Genesis shoot-em-ups... although he referred to them as "shmups." Personally I can't stand that name. It sounds like the result of an unholy sexual act between the Smurfs and the Muppets. "Shmups." Blecch.

Another game-related term I dislike is "feelies." You know, the story-related props that came with Infocom's games and a few others. Just call them props. "Feelies" sounds like a bad touch. I have a bunch of the things in my basement, and you can have them if you want. I will give you feelies. In my basement. If you can't pick them up yourself, send your wife. I will give your wife feelies in my basement. Actually there are probably more than she can carry. Have her bring your kids along too. I will give your wife and kids feelies, in my basement. See? It just sounds inappropriate.

If the Smurfs and the Muppets give each other feelies, you're going to end up with Shmups.

Welcome to the chilly castles of Olde Normandie. So you've come to save Sir Hedric, have you? Then beware the torture racks and poisoned arrows! Your noble friend, Sir Hedric, is about to lose his betrothed to the Black Knight. He must stop the wedding in time! But the Black Knight has locked Sir Hedric in his dungeon. An expert in the practice of medieval torture, the knight has left orders to be sure Sir Hedric does not get out alive. You must guide Sir Hedric to the palace in time to stop the wedding! Get past killer gurads, down dimly-lit spiral stair- cases, through iron gates, across dangerous drawbridges, past troops of trolls... You formulate the strategy. You make the decisions. Sir Hedric's life depends on you. Will you take on the adventure? Can you find the way out of the perilous dungeon?

I haven't been able to locate much information on this game, just this mention on Armchair Arcade. I wrote Bill a while back but didn't get a reply. My copy is sealed, but I would like to get a look at the manual and find out what type of game it is: Strategy, RPG, parser adventure, or something else. That's likely why it ended up buried in the "I'll get to it" pile of the collection room.

I'm finished up through and including Sierra on the Vault organizing process, but still need to enter the changes into the database. I've been trying to put in an hour most nights, comparing the online list with the actual shelves and jotting down uncatalogued acquisitions, all while chanting "Game Hoardaz" from the latest column. If you heard me doing it, you would laugh and make fun. This is why there will be no YouTube video.

Sorry no updates for a while. My efforts to organize the Vault sort of fell by the wayside as outdoor projects have taken over. But I'm hoping to get back to it this week. In the meantime I've listed another set of the Infocom sale sheets on the auction page. Part of it is, after sitting in front of a computer at work for eight hours, I rarely feel like doing it some more when I get home.

I've told people this in person, but I might as well confess it here, too: I've grown to hate computers. When I was a kid I loved them, because back then not everybody knew how to use them, especially in my little bumblefuck home town, so it made me feel unique and smart. Now they're freakin' everywhere, they're a thousand times more complex, with ten thousand times as many things that can go wrong with them, and endlessly infuriating. If I'd known the future back then, I might very well have chosen a different career path.

I sent them my correspondence with the author of Building Applications with Cornerstone, to illustrate that the Addison-Wesley version listed on their site was never published, and sent them cover scans showing the ISBN of the actual book (which they don't have listed). In response, they sent me some links to a couple of other sites that also list the Addison-Wesley version... one of which actually stated at the bottom that their information was obtained from Amazon's pages!

As far as updating the Vault, my Adventure International list is now current, except for the cassette games which I keep in a separate area of my collection room and haven't gotten to yet.

I'm looking for some information from anyone who collects Level 9 games, regarding the company's address on the back of their box and plastic wallet packages. I've noticed their usual address is a 229 Hughenden Road, but I have one Return to Eden wallet with a PO Box 39, and several with no address at all. I'm trying to determine how many variations exist, so I've put together a .csv file of what I have. If any Level 9 experts are inclined to compare it to their own collections, I'd appreciate it.

There's also a revision to the Cornerstone Database Database, after hearing back from the author of the Building Applications book about the alternate version that was slated to be published by Addison-Wesley.

I've also made a pretty massive update to the Cornerstone Database Database, finally adding notes on the new materials I've acquired. As always, contributions are welcome. Would you believe there are still people actively using Cornerstone, after more than 30 years? Just this week I got an email from someone who bought a business and found their computer systems set up with it. They were looking for documentation, but unfortunately I'm out at the moment. I did point them to some (fairly expensive) copies on Amazon, and confirm that it was what they needed.

Left straight from work and drove three and a half hours up. I have got to stop talking to my GPS. I call it "Carmen", because that rhymes with Garmin, and also because "Carmen Sandiego", since I always know Where In The World I am. Nothing to do with the opera, although it does have a pleasant voice. I'm amazed by how often it perfectly syncs up to the electronica I have playing on my car stereo. Sometimes it hilariously mispronounces names, for instance it refers to GameStop as "ga-MESS-top", which, depending on how you feel about GameStop, may be strangely appropriate. I find myself thanking Carmen after navigating a confusing section of roads, and even having little one-sided conversations with it. I am so very alone at times.

*ahem*

Got to the hotel, checked in, enjoyed the pool and the hot tub. Back when I registered, the Sheraton was already full so they refered me to another nearby hotel. Lots of other people too, apparently, as I started receiving StreetPass tags on my Nintendo 3DS as soon as I checked in. That never happens in Peoria. I'm lucky to get even one after a day running errands.

I got to MGC early the next morning. Before event security, it turns out. Nobody asked for my ticket, and I was able to wander the arcade room and play a few games before they booted me out because they were still setting up. Got the high score on the R-Type standup, and it was still there when I left the show. Explored the museum areas, where they had vintage consoles and computers set up for people to play. Blazed through the first third of Dungeon Explorer on their TurboGrafx-16. The family used to do 5-player on it in my teen years, so I can play that game from memory. One of the computers had Zork running, and there was a Hitchhiker's Guide grey box for TI-99 which was the only Infocom item I encountered at the entire show. The owner also had a Scott Adams Hint Book on display. Alas, not for sale.

I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon browsing the vendor tables, which were in a huge tented area attached to the hotel. Not a lot in the way of computer games, and when I did find them they were mostly more recent CD-ROM titles, and just a couple of vastly overpriced Commodore games. Console game heaven, though. It was the first place I'd been to in years that actually had TurboGrafx games. While browsing, I realized that I own some rare, valuable console titles. Games I picked up just to play that are now highly desired and impossible to find cheap, such as Haunting Ground and Rule of Rose for the PlayStation 2. Also saw some stuff I had as a kid that I wish I'd hung on to, particularly the Pac-Man miniature tabletop arcade game by Coleco, now selling for at least $100. I still have some Q*Bert plushes in my closet. Wonder what they'd go for?

On one end of the tent row was a stage where bands would play tunes from classic games (liiiitle too loud for my sensitive ears; I felt bad for the vendors who had to set up shop right next to them). At the other end was a tabletop gaming area where I'd sit for a few minutes after each pass around the vendors and check my 3DS for StreetPass tags. I got almost 150 tags in a single day, and would have gotten more if a 3DS firmware update didn't limit you to 10 at a time now. (When my friend Pix_Z and I went to E3 in 2012, she got half that many before noon, without having to stop and check and clear out the old ones.)

I found exactly one item for my I-F collection, a U.K. version of the most recent Space Quest compilation, but I bought a bunch of console stuff as well, and definitely spent more than I should have. Bought one game that ended up not having the disc when I removed the vendor wrap, but I did think to snag a business card from the dealer so I'm hoping they're honest. (Note to self and others, always open vendor-sealed items in front of the vendor immediately after you buy them.)

The show was fairly crowded, not nearly as bad as E3, but it wasn't uncommon to have to stand a bit at the vendor tables before you could get close enough to actually browse their wares. There were quite a few cosplayers walking around. I saw two or three Marios, a Luigi, Princess Peach, Bub and Bob the dinosaurs from Bubble Bobble, an excellent Joel from The Last of Us, and a couple of women in outfits I didn't recognize, who may have been actual game characters or may have just been using the event as an excuse to walk around in public while wearing not too many clothes.

At this point I still hadn't officially checked into the show. I was able to pass freely between the hotel lobby, arcade room, vendor booths, and museum rooms, and nobody stopped me even though I wasn't wearing the blue wristband indicating I'd paid the admission. Finally I found the right place to check in on my own, got my pre-printed ticket scanned, and got the wristband. This was well after noon, meaning I'd meandered back and forth across the event for half a day without being noticed. Tip for next year, in case anyone from MGC reads this. Security at E3 was much, much tighter.

Back into the hotel and down a set of stairs, there were conference rooms where more museums and smaller events were set up, and even some actual hotel rooms where indie developers and Internet gaming site operators had set up shop. I scored a nice pile of swag from the Nintendo room... played a variety of Pac-Man machines in one room as kids and parents made Pac-Man themed get-well cards at a nearby table for hospitalized children... decided NOT to make a fool of myself on the Dance Dance Revolution game (for 40, I'm still fairly awesome at DDR with my RedOctane Ignition 2.0 pad at home on the PS2, but I've barely set foot on the arcade version)... saw the alpha version of SkyCurser, an absolutely awesome old-school 2D shoot-'em-up (I hate the term "shmups", it sounds like the retarded mutant offspring of the Smurfs and the Muppets)... and in one room they had more original Xbox Steel Battalion controllers in one place than I'd ever seen before. (If you haven't heard of it, it's THE most complicated game controller in existence.)

Between the vendor booths and Nintendo I made 3 trips out to the car and back to make loot drops. At that point I had exactly three dollars left, so I decided I'd better keep myself away from the vendors, even though many of them do take credit cards. I caught a presentation in the hotel restaurant/bar from two of the developers of Gottlieb's Exterminator, which I remembered as one of the oddest, most unique arcade games ever made. Then back to the arcade until about 7:00 when I started to get tired, so I found a great little BBQ rib place (I hadn't eaten all day), spent my last $3 cash on a chocolate custard cone (Wisconsin is famous for this... and cheese... and legal fireworks sales if you live in Illinois), then drove back to the hotel and hit the pool and hot tub again.

I'd only bought the one-day ticket, and to be honest I felt like that was enough, so I spent Sunday driving around to various stores I found online that sounded promising. Didn't find much, but a couple of them looked like they'd be worth checking again the next time I'm up there. One comic and game store had a kitty wandering around that let me pet it. It was a grey tabby like mine, but smaller, but equally noisy. Google Maps needs up update, as lot of the places I investigated were no longer actually there, and the address of one was clearly in the middle of a residential neighborhood that was rather... economically depressed, that's a nice way of putting it. For the record, the Mega Media Exchange on Farwell in Milwaukee, BattleBox Video Games, Northern Novelty and the Music Recyclery at the Shops of Grand Avenue all appear to be defunct, as is GameCorner in Beloit. Fortunately I had Carmen to navigate. Took a slightly longer route through Rockford to bypass the Chicagoland tollways, since I didn't have any cash left to pay them and didn't feel like messing with paying online. Got back home about 6:00 last night.

TL;DR version:

If you love console and arcade games and live within driving distance of Milwaukee, definitely check out Midwest Gaming Classic. Bring lots of money for the vendors. If you're only into computer gaming you won't find as much there, but it might be worth checking out, and maybe you'll get lucky. If you're a sneaky miscreant you might be able to slip in undetected.

I was also lucky enough to raid the free bin at Disc Replay in Hoffman Estates. Scored a bunch of Family Guy DVD box sets that they couldn't buy from the person who brought them in (already overstocked), and that person didn't want to lug them back home. So they let me take them just to get rid of them. Something to add to my flea market table this year.

Inventorying the Vault, I'm up to "L" alphabetically, although I did bypass Infocom (which is like a third of my entire collection) until I get all of the promotional stuff bagged and shelved. I have notes on Adventure International but haven't had time to make all of the additions and adjustments yet. Oh, and I found the missing Wombats! It was on a nearby shelf, moved out of place at one point when I was shifting things around. To mark the occasion, I used it for the first vault item page since, I think, 2003. I'll put up more if I can find the time, but I'd like to get the collection itself organized first.

This weekend I'm meeting with a guy who used to be an IBM PC dealer in the 1980s. I met him at a ham radio expo, where I bought the one game he brought with him to the show, a graphic adventure version of Wayne's World similar to the early LucasArts point-and-clicks. He said he still has a lot of software from back then, so I'm hoping to bring back a carload. Kind of like the old days.

Anyway, if anyone's interested, I've got some old computer magazines: Analog, Antic, SofTalk, possibly Computer Gaming World once I check for duplicates. The Questbusters have been spoken for, by a Shoppe visitor who responded about the questions I had. Still need to look at a couple more before I can feel my theories on some of the early issues are 100% confirmed.

If anyone has any 1980-1983 issues of DEC Professional I'd be interested in possibly buying or trading for those.

Making slow progress on the collection room. I cleared out a bunch of shipping boxes last night, enough to move other things around and clear a path so I can actually walk in here again without stepping over stuff. Next phase is to finish organizing my old computer magazines, possibly sell some of them because it's getting ridiculous, and in the process hopefully excavate my New Zork Times and Status Line issues, which are missing in action at the moment. (Found XYZZYnews though!)

Here are a couple of pics of what it looked like before I started cleaning, if anyone is interested:

In the meantime, I've forced myself to spend an hour a night in the collection room, organizing stuff. My collection and want list have been outdated for years now, and I'm determined to make this the year I fix that. I also realize that I say that every year, but this year I finally seem to have the time and the ambition. (Now just waiting for some real-life crap to hit and derail my efforts yet again...)

I did finally get around to cleaning up the badly decayed links page. All of the sites still in existence now have their locations updated, and I've removed the defunct ones. If you have a page, or know of a good one I've left out, please tell me and I'll set up a link to it. It does need to contain information about collecting or playing vintage computer games. If you have a page where you sell such games, that's fine too, but please no links to your eBay items.

There is one BetterThanTheBay auction still active, so I'll wrap that up as soon as it's done. If you have open transactions, I'll get those finished as soon as possible. Any other issues, you are welcome to email me, just be aware that I may not respond quickly. Just wanted to remind everyone how much I love being repeatedly pestered when I'm busy and stressed. Which is to say, not in the slightest. Please, don't be this guy.

A previous bidder contacted me, seeming to indicate he was expecting to receive this, even though I don't have him as winner. I'm not finding the item here, so I've asked him for clarification. I deleted the auction listing (even though I'm loath to do that) until the confusion gets straightened out.

Normally the flea market is one Sunday per month, but in November they're doing another on the 9th, so I signed up for that one as well. I have a small gold mine of consoles I'd like to get tested so I can bring them to sell, but I'll also try to get a few more BetterThanTheBay items up.

I know I'm always ranting about the issues with the USPS's website, but this time it was my fault. Let it never be said that I'm unwilling to self-criticize.

If you're ever in the Chicago area, be sure to check out the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield. It's by far the best video arcade I've seen since the glory days of the 1980s. The building is larger than it looks on the outside, and it's got several rooms crammed with arcade cabinets, most of them original, all organized by genre. My cousin and I had 4 hours fly by here, barely realizing it. I spent a good slice of that playing their Ikaruga (kit-built, not a Japanese original), Darius, R-Type, Mars Matrix... pretty much any 2D scrolling shooter you could possibly want. (Radiant Silvergun, alas, was down for repairs.) Brought back a lot of memories.

I've listed my loot from VCFMW and ECCC below and on the sale pages. Mostly Amiga and Commodore items. I also came across a Wing Commander III Collector's Edition, in the huge box with the metal film canister, and I'm debating whether to list it in the Shoppe or on BetterThanTheBay.

Segueing into BetterThanTheBay, there are more auctions ending this weekend, and almost no competition. I can't help but notice I've been listing (what I think are) a lot of awesome items, but they just aren't drawing many bids, and I'm wondering why. So, please tell me: What's holding you back from using BetterThanTheBay? Is it that I'm setting the starting bids too high? The fact that you only get to bid once? Not being able to watch the price go up as the auction runs? The "no reselling on eBay" clause? Please let me know. I'm a bit disheartened by this, and am considering switching the rest of these items over to the trade-only system if things don't pick up soon.

1337 haxx0r, 3h?

Remember my Chinese script kiddies? YOIS experienced another hack attempt earlier this week, this time in the form of a full-fledged automated assault that probed for all kinds of security exploits and vulnerabilities. This one came from Canada. And we all know what Canadians are like, don't we? Heh. I hope the source of my next hack attempt is American. I already have a clip picked out. It's a good'un.

The script ran for about an hour before I noticed it, but didn't do much actual damage, aside from creating a crapload of fake survey responses I had to clear out, and hammering my inbox with an avalanche of automated emails generated by all the webpage calls. At first I thought it was a denial-of-service attack, but I could still get to all the pages, so I was able to view my private logs. Fun fact, I've had a lot of warning systems and precautions in place to monitor the site since the days of the first attempted Shoppe "hack", the twatnougat who went nuclear on me after I busted him selling self-printed Infocom T-shirts as originals... Remember that guy?

So it was easy to see what was happening, and the undoubtedly hockey-loving script kiddy's IP was blocked after a quick email to Stefan, the IF-Legends admin, who suggested it was probably eBay, Microsoft and Sony all ganging up to annoy me. ;) Forwarding the relevant portions of my logs to his ISP seems to have fried his Canadian bacon for good.

I've also installed a honeypot in a remote corner of the Shoppe, to help catch other miscreants who would attack sites in a similar manner and/or harvest emails for spam. In the spirit of Zork, I've christened it "Flood Control Dam #3".

The first and most important change is that users now need to declare that they are not going to resell BTTB items on eBay. Given my long history of disgust with eBay, not to mention the name of this site, I didn't think that was something I needed to explicitly state, but apparently I do. I've added another checkbox to the registration process for this. Existing users, this means you will need to register again. I've sent everybody who signed up before a notice about this.

The original intent with BetterThanTheBay was to get these rare items into the hands of fellow collectors who would appreciate them. It was not to make myself a cheap source of rare items that people could immediately resell at a huge personal profit. When I bought this lot of promotional Infocom items from my source, I made a promise to her that, should any of them end up going for an insanely high price, I would share some of that windfall with her. Flipping items on eBay at a huge markup will rob her of that. This is not just about me or you. Out of respect for her, I'm asking everyone nicely not to do this.

There is now a (not-so-nice) contingency plan in place, so I won't get blindsided like that again. If I catch anyone flipping these items on eBay -- and I have automated searches set up through multiple sites -- I will switch the remainder of them over to a new system which is already set up, tested, and ready to go. This will permanently replace BetterThanTheBay, and the BTTB page will feature the full contact information of whoever is responsible, and it will never, ever be taken down.

Oh, and as a little gift to myself, the first auctions are set to close on my birthday. So you'll be spoiling my birthday present if you take them to eBay. Just a little extra guilt-trip there. ^^)

Second, I'm streamlining the shipping process. Both U.S. and international shipping will be via insured Priority Mail only, since the boxes are free and uniform in size. It saves me the trouble of hunting for the perfect one. Also, to speed up turnaround and further discourage flippers, any combined shipping will only be done with auctions ending on the same day. Otherwise, everything gets paid for and shipped individually. (This does not apply to YOIS. You can still combine items from the regular Shoppe, like always, and you can still combine YOIS and BTTB items. Just no more holding auction items while waiting for other auctions to finish.) To reflect this, I've also shortened the expected transaction turnaround time from 30 days to 10 days.

Third, I've added another checkbox to the registration process, asking people to verify that their YOIS mailing address and their PayPal mailing address match. With the original batch of auctions, I had a couple of cases of mismatched addresses, one of which resulted in a package being sent to the wrong place. (It seems to be PayPal's fault. They keep bringing back people's old addresses for some reason.) I'll be comparing them myself, and if they don't match I will cancel the payment and ask you to resend it once they do match. This will delay the shipping of your items, so please check in advance.

Fourth and finally, all bids are now hidden until the auction is over, with the exception of the minimum starting amount. This will eliminate any influence one person's bid might have on another's, which is something I noticed happening during the trial run -- People bidding $1 more than the current maximum. From now on, bid what you feel it's worth, not an amount based on what any other bidder before you has said. Once the auction is over, all bids will be revealed in the usual manner -- amounts including the winner's true max visible to everyone, user IDs only visible to the seller and participants. Again, with BetterThanTheBay, you bid once, so always enter your true maximum.

Not specific to BTTB, but still worth mentioning: I have fixed the issue with the international shipping calculator. Again. I still loathe the U.S. Postal Service's website. Should that ever change, I will shout it from a mountaintop. I do not suspect that it will.

That's everything. I appreciate everyone's patience while I sorted all of this out.

I had one package undeliverable because PayPal merged the buyer's old address into their new account. Still waiting on that mess to be resolved.

Then there's the address in Canada that the USPS (yes, THEM again, *sigh*) doesn't recognize. I tried to buy the postage online because it's a bit cheaper that way, but you have to choose a city and province from a drop-down and then they give you a list of valid postal codes... Only my buyer's isn't showing up there! So I get to diddledick around with that, too.

The third buyer is paying with a wire transfer. Don't worry, it's someone I know and trust, or I wouldn't even accept that method. But I still can't wait to see what could possibly go wrong with THAT.

Unfortunately, with the weather turning good, outdoor projects and bicycling are calling me, so I don't really have time to mess with it right now on top of everything else. Plus, the whole experience of seeing the BTTB items immediately flipped on eBay sort of pissed on my fire a little. I need some time away to get past that and think about the best way to handle future auctions.

All that effort. All the hours of hard work coding and testing I put into BetterThanTheBay... and the very first items I sell immediately get listed on the very site I was trying to get away from. It just... feels like a real slap in the face.

The idea was to get rare promotional items to collectors who wanted them, at a price dictated by the bidding itself. It was not intended to give people a cheap, secret source of rare items they could turn around and flip at a huge profit.

It's my own fault, really. I'm too naive and trusting. I try to be honest and fair, and I tend to assume other people will treat me the same way. But apparently greed still trumps friendship in the vintage game collecting world.

I wonder if he was ever going to tell me, or just keep using me? Needless to say, this individual is blocked from any future bidding. I won't take back the positive feedbacks, since he did pay on time. But I don't have to keep putting up with this.

At least he's not attempting to pass them off as originals, but that wouldn't stop someone unscrupulous from buying and trying. Unfortunately my days of fighting counterfeiting on the front lines are long over (I don't have the time or energy, and the last time I ended up feeling distinctly unappreciated), so the best I can do is put the information out there so people can be aware.

I've got a full schedule of yard work and family obligations planned, so I won't be able to monitor the site as closely as I'd like. If you're planning to bid on one of the 3 items closing, please don't wait until the last minute to request BetterThanTheBay access.

More items coming once I have time to list them. This week has been insane.

I've started things off slowly, just a few listings at first, to make sure the impact is minimal if there are any issues. (Shouldn't be, as I tested the heck out of things.) I have many, many more awesome Infocom goodies to list, and I will begin adding them in a few days.

My thumb is much better. Still a little pain and stiffness, but I could hitchhike if I wanted to. I should probably hold off on declaring any thumb wars for a while yet.

I need more hands.

Because, whoever coded the U.S. Postal Service's online rate calculation API and wrote the documentation for it, I want to punch them in the stomach, the throat, the nose, the mouth, the genitals, and both eyes, simultaneously. To do that, I need more hands.

I have figured out the problem I was having with the API, and it was head-poundingly stupid and infuriating. This is an example of the API call I was passing them, which was failing:

http://production.shippingapis.com/ShippingAPI.dll?API=RateV4&XML=
<RateV4Request USERID="XXXXXXXX" PASSWORD="XXXXXXXX"><Revision/>
<Package ID="1ST">
  <Service>EXPRESS</Service>
  <ZipOrigination>61612</ZipOrigination>
  <ZipDestination>90808</ZipDestination>
  <Pounds>8</Pounds>
  <Ounces>1</Ounces>
  <Container>RECTANGULAR</Container>
  <Size>LARGE</Size>
  <Length>18</Length>
  <Width>12</Width>
  <Height>12</Height>
</Package></RateV4Request>

(Obviously I've withheld my login and password, lest others misappropriate it.) And here was the error I got:

Invalid XML Element content is invalid according to the DTD/Schema. Expecting: Height, Girth, Value, AmountToCollect, SpecialServices, Content, GroundOnly, SortBy, Machinable, ReturnLocations, ReturnServ....

The maddening thing is, I was clearly including Height. And all of the other elements are listed as optional in their online documentation, which admittedly in the past I have found to be infested with errors, so I had no reason to suspect that now is any different.

But thanks to this wonderful, WONDERFUL thread, I was able to figure out the problem. It expects width BEFORE height! Yes, everywhere ELSE on their stupid website, it prompts you to enter length first, then width. But here, it wants WIDTH first, and will fail otherwise.

http://production.shippingapis.com/ShippingAPI.dll?API=RateV4&XML=
<RateV4Request USERID="XXXXXXXX" PASSWORD="XXXXXXXX"><Revision/>
<Package ID="1ST">
  <Service>EXPRESS</Service>
  <ZipOrigination>61612</ZipOrigination>
  <ZipDestination>90808</ZipDestination>
  <Pounds>8</Pounds>
  <Ounces>1</Ounces>
  <Container>RECTANGULAR</Container>
  <Size>LARGE</Size>
  <Width>12</Width>
  <Length>18</Length>
  <Height>12</Height>
</Package></RateV4Request>

When I switched the positions of the two items in red, IT WORKED. Posting this here so others might find it and avoid the aggravation I went through.

Now, I'll admit, in their online documentation, they do list Width before Length. But, one, they could have called attention to the importance of the order somewhere in said documentation. And, two, my frustration was compounded by an error message that had NO BEARING on the actual problem. Why not change the error to something like "Expected Width before Length"?

To the person or persons responsible for coding the U.S. Postal Service's online rate calculation API and writing the documentation for it:

I HATE YOU.

I will not track you down, because I have more important uses for my time.

But if the randomness of the universe ever presents me with the opportunity to punch you in the stomach, the throat, the nose, the mouth, the genitals, and both eyes, simultaneously? I am carpe-ing that diem.

I'm also kitty-sitting for a family member this week so I don't have as much time. But it is coming, I promise.

In the meantime, has anyone else successfully used the USPS's rate calculation API? After days of non-response, they're telling me they don't provide the level of technical support I need. The issue I'm having involves packages over 4 pounds, where you have to specify the box dimensions. I've quintuple-checked the XML and their documentation regarding what is required, it looks right, but obviously something is still wrong since it's not working.

UPDATE: I've changed the error message for packages over 4 pounds so it's a little friendlier, until I can get this fixed. Just contact me and I'll get you a quote manually.

I have to take this seriously, because this is the sort of crap that happens to me. Whenever I have a customer service issue, I seem to fall through every single crack in their support system. It happened with eBay, it happened with Microsoft, it's happened with a few local businesses I've dealt with. I've found the best way to avoid it is to imagine the worst-case scenario, and take steps to derail it.

*clap*

*clap*

*clap*

This is ridiculous, and more than a little bit horrifying. Any joker could simply walk in and walk out with several armloads of packages, and no one would ever know what happened! Hell, I could have done it if I'd wanted to. Needless to say, I gave my YOIS packages to an actual person at the counter after buying the postage from the automated machines. And I pointed out the situation to them. Hopefully they addressed it shortly after I left.

Here are a couple of pictures I snapped using my Vita. (Yes, Vita. I still do not, and never will, carry a mobile phone.)

Has anyone else experienced a sharp decline in the quality of the U.S. Postal Service, starting around mid-December? Since then I've had:

• One package sent to me that showed no tracking information for almost a month until I filed an insurance claim, then said it was being returned to sender because of an error in my delivery address, then finally turned up on my end, with absolutely no address problems whatsoever.
• One $300 money order, sent to a local business, that has not been delivered after a week, and for which I must wait 60 days to file a claim of loss.
• Consistent long lines at the counter after 5PM, waits of 45 minutes to an hour, with only one person manning them.

Some kind of power short, that's the final diagnosis. The good news is, they were able to transfer the hard drive contents, so I didn't lose a ton of work and settings. The bad news is, for now I only have one and a half working USB ports (one that's fine and the other which is a little finicky, but I've figured out how to work with it). Going to pick up a powered hub and see if it can handle that. Short of replacing the mainboard entirely, there doesn't seem to be much else I can do about that.

To celebrate this... well I wouldn't call it a victory... "mitigated clusterfuck" has a certain ring to it. To celebrate this mitigated clusterfuck, how about a few new items? (Scroll down.) Couple of greys, a folio, an Ultima cluebook, and the rest of the Building Applications with Cornerstone copies I was able to obtain. These are most likely the last ones I will ever get, for realsies this time.

*sigh* December was pretty much a perfect shitstorm. Work was aggravating and stressful, then there was all the holiday-related crap I had to run around and take care of. So when the computer screwed up I pretty much shut down for the rest of the year. I can only deal with so much aggravation at once, and when I hit my limits I tend to hit them HARD.

Just ask the guy who is now blocked from using the Shoppe. I warned him on this page, and I warned him over email, and he just would not stop asking, "Are we there yet?" And finally I just turned this car around. (I'm not worried about losing his business. He was attempting to lowball me at every turn. $20 for the sealed Infocom sampler? Puh-leaze.)

After Christmas I started shopping around locally for a repair service or replacement computer, because I just didn't have the energy to dink with it myself. Then the winter storm hit, and the cold and the roads were bad enough that I didn't want to drive anywhere. But this weekend, I should finally have a working computer again. Which means I should be faster at filling orders now, and I can pick up coding the new functionality for selling the rare items.

*sigh* Since I have neither the time nor the inclination to dink around with setting up a new computer at the moment, I'm living without one. I'll do my best to keep the Shoppe running, but this means slower response, and none on weekends. This is also going to indefinitely delay the coding of my method for selling the rare Infocom pieces.

Thanks to the fellow collector who sent me this tip. That definitely explains the guy who just tried to buy all of mine up at once. Hmm, maybe I should start using the 'Bay as a price guide again. Do you still have to be a member to search completed listings?

UPDATE: It looks like it may have been a passing fad. This one cracked $50 but didn't go much higher. I'll keep monitoring them. So for a few brief hours I thought I was suddenly thousands of dollars richer, but then I lost it all. This must be how day traders feel, at least the ones who are bad at it.

• The last of the grey boxes, including several shrinked.
• The last Fooblitzky.
• The last Classic Mystery and Sci-Fi Classics slipcovers.
• The last Infocom Sampler.
• Plus I added a few loose disks and parts to some of the incomplete items.

• $1 off every individual item priced at $10 or higher.
• Plus 5% off all orders totalling $100 or more (before shipping).
• Plus half price shipping on ALL orders.
• And your choice of a free InvisiClues pen or Moonmist "Legendary Ghosts of Cornwall" booklet with ANY order, while supplies last. (Which they should... Seriously, I have a ton of these things.)

For all orders opened between Friday, November 29th and Sunday, December 1st. I say opened because I work with flexible prices, and sometimes hammering out a deal can take a few days. So as long as you start the trade discussion during those days, the deal is still good. And since I'm personally in U.S. Central Standard Time and the YOIS server is on UTC/GMT +1 hours, I'll even be somewhat flexible with the cutoff time.

Just place your orders as normal and I'll do a partial refund afterward, since there's no way I will have time to code this into the site before then.

• The last of the InvisiClues.
• The last of the Infocomics, including some packaging mockups for ZorkQuest #2. (In case you missed it, that's the first official hint I've dropped as to where all of this stuff came from!)
• A few loose game pieces.
• Loose InvisiClues pens.
• A couple of Cornerstone demo kits.
• Science Fiction Classics slipcover set.

There will be one more wave of greys sometime next week, but nothing I haven't already listed. And I have a stack of loose disks to go through and possibly complete some of the incomplete packages. Email me if you've bought an incomplete one in recent weeks and I can send you the disk, no extra charge. After that I'll begin seriously working on my method to sell the ultra-rare pieces... and preparing to acquire the second half of this amazing collection.

Yes. There is more. :O

I'm also on the trail of an interesting artifact from the Infocom era that I stumbled across last night. Hopefully it's still available; I need to call the place tomorrow and find out. (Sorry for being deliberately vague. I'll share more details once I have it confirmed.)

If you want to help others who weren't so lucky, please go to the Red Cross or Salvation Army. Beware of charity scams, as this is the kind of thing that brings them out in droves.

Also, spammers? Please stop sending me messages about the amazing video that will show me how to seduce any woman I want. I am not and will never be desperate enough to open one. Seriously, it was mildly amusing at first, but after about 500 of them it's just sad. Try something original.

Just a reminder, you can ask for pictures of anything if you feel my text descriptions are inadequate. Even though all text worked well enough for playing Infocom, it may not be quite as ideal when you're collecting them. I've had photo functionality written into the site for a while. Maybe once I get all of this listed I'll actually try it out.

The "Made in EU" notation leads me to believe it came from the blue "Essentials" release, but mine is sealed so I can't (won't) check. If someone out there has an opened one, can you confirm?

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE: Confirmed, it is from the European "Essentials" release. Thanks, Karl!

I've updated the Cornerstone Database Database with a few new details I've learned. And yes, there will be more Cornerstone related items listed eventually.

This is definitely the way I'll do it, pace myself, list a smaller batch every day or two rather than stress out trying to get everything listed ASAP. Some of the rarer items I'm still not sure how to price, so I'll also be working on a solution to that.

In the meantime, I did empty out the two huge boxes and sort of organize everything on some folding tables. Please stare in awe at what is soon to come your way (faster if I can get this retarded computer functional again):

Quite a few gems this time, including those Japanese items I asked long ago whether anyone was interested in. Some of them, I'm interested to see if anyone else even knew they existed. This update has been a long time coming, as I have been extremely busy lately, and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Right now I'm in the process of acquiring several large collections, so there will definitely be a lot more listed. I'll share more details when I'm ready, but for now let's just say I'm putting the Infocomme back in Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe. You've probably noticed over the years that my Infocom inventory has gradually depleted, replaced by games from other companies. That will be changing, beginning very soon. The plan is to try to keep to a regular schedule and list a batch of new items on a weekly basis, probably on Sunday afternoons, around 2-3PM CST. But I've also been doing flea markets on Sundays, so there's no guarantee I won't skip an occasional update, or post on a different day and time.

Since I'm sure this new lot will spawn many requests for pictures, I'd like to recommend that newcomers and people who have been away from the Shoppe for a while take a moment to re-familiarize yourselves with the FAQs, especially this one. As I said, I have been extremely busy lately. If you pester me with a question that is already covered in the FAQ, I will only respond to you using Internet memes. Because Internet memes are tired and annoying, just like those questions.

I have an opportunity to purchase a sizable quantity, but wanted to gauge the interest first, to make sure it's worth it.

One thing that's changed is Media Mail. USPS is telling me I can no longer use this method unless every single item in your order is a book (and the fact that Infocom games have the browsie doesn't count, in their eyes). So the Shoppe checks first, and won't offer it unless it qualifies. Sorry about this. It's their call, not mine, and I don't want to lose money on returned packages. Same with international orders, I have to declare the full value on the customs forms. Please take that into consideration when deciding how much to spend.

I am trying, and have been off and on for weeks, to update the Shoppe's postage calculator so it uses the U.S. Postal Service's rate API (as my old method is no longer working). Their API is an absolute pile of crap, and their technical support is just as bad. I have tried everything I can think of to fix it, so I am down to asking for assistance.

I will offer your choice of any item from the Shoppe, excluding ultra-rarities, to anyone who is able to figure it out. Please contact me if you wish to undertake The Challenge, and I shall provide the full details.

I have a case open with them, but for now you'll need to go to the page itself (there's a link in the YOIS error message) and choose the postage option you want. Then I'll either send you a PayPal invoice, or you can initiate a payment and manually specify the item cost and the shipping cost.

Another collector, Jason Joyce, wrote to me saying he had found a Zork Trilogy which appeared to be complete, except the zorkmid was not an original. In his exact words:

"After I got it back home, I noticed the Zorkmid didn't look or feel right. Significantly lighter than the other Zorkmid I have. After a casual inspection turned up a seam on the edge of the coin (not centered, but toward the obverse side of the coin), I knew why.

Apparently someone's gone in to the Zorkmid "minting" business by cold casting coins with a mold, resin and bronze powder."

This thread is a fascinating step-by-step of how he did it, complete with photos, including a comparison between an original and his re-mint showing the difference in the metal. The discussion is a couple of years old, but I wasn't aware of it until Jason pointed me toward it. I'd heard of interest in making new zorkmids before, most notably Robin Lionheart's Zorkmid Project, but this thread is the first time I've actually seen one made.

My position on this remains the same as I told Robin years ago. So long as the recasts are clearly identifiable and are not being sold as originals, I have no problem with this. The creator, whose name appears to be Todd, clearly states his intent to mint more of them, and if he has it would definitely explain how one ended up in the original package Jason found. Even if Todd is honest, you can bet there are people who are not, and who may try to pass a replica off as an original. Be careful if buying on eBay, and always ask to see pictures of both sides, and the edge to check for seams. They were originally in a small plastic baggie, not loose, so that's a good indicator of authenticity. Zorkmids are valuable and highly sought after these days, which makes them an obvious target for counterfeiters.

Much as I'd like to be able to, I can't afford to give everyone free Priority Mail International shipping. I'm awaiting a response from them, but until then I'll be contacting overseas buyers and letting them know the shipping quotes manually.

The Shoppe's postage calculator is finally fixed. Sorry it took so long.

After three whole months, I am finally down to the Last. Frikkin'. Box.

And for all intents and purposes, we're done. The last box is just 30-odd copies of Third Courier, and I'm not gonna bother listing them all. I've already put up a dozen or so, and the Shoppe is overflowing with duplicates as it is.

For what it's worth, I've also found that spraying a little Febreeze on a soft cloth and wiping the game box or materials with it can sometimes help alleviate the odor. I'm kind of pressed for time and trying to get these listed fast, so I haven't done it myself. But if it makes the difference between a sale and not, I'd be glad to do it and let you know if the odor subsides.

I'll start on the first box of TomMage stuff tonight. It's going to take awhile -- I need to price, weigh, and write descriptions for every single piece, then generate a script to bulk-insert them, since that's still faster than entering them all manually.

• Twenty-six boxed copies of National Lampoon's Chess Maniac 5 Billion and One.
• Forty-five boxed copies of The Third Courier, by Accolade.
• Thirty or so various boxed Cinemaware titles (Defender of the Crown, Rocket Ranger, Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon).
• More boxed Mastertronic games (Demon's Forge, Demon's Tomb, Time to Die / Borrowed Time) than I bothered to count.
• Eight early strip poker or similar adult-themed games (yay for 8-bit nudity!)

Here's the final tally:

Infocom games: 1 large box.

Non-Infocom I-F games: 5 large boxes.

Non-IF Shoppe-worthy games: 20 large boxes.

To be sold through Amazon Marketplace: 7 large boxes.

Donated to my local computer recycler for a nice tax deduction: 4 small and 2 large boxes.

Kept for myself: The equivalent of 1 large box.

I've been working since before Christmas to organize and catalogue the 10+ boxes of games I've accumulated over the past year. There are now over 300 new items added. The Shoppe is stuffed to the rafters.

Apologies to those of you who are signed up on the waiting list, but... With this many items I just didn't have the time to list them all individually. Instead I used a bulk-insert script which unfortunately meant bypassing the waiting list check. So if there's something that would have matched, you won't get a notification or reservation. To be honest I've thought about doing away with the waiting list altogether, as nearly every entry is for something either so rare or in such pristine condition that I'm extremely unlikely to ever get it in. Let me know if there are any strong opinions on this one way or the other.

If no one else wants it after this time, then I will quietly close the account. However it may turn out, I can rest assured that I will:

• Never again have to deal with a deadbeat bidder.
• Never again wish I had bid more on an item I didn't win.
• Never again feel like I bid too much on an item I did win.
• Never again have to pay to list items that don't sell.
• Never again surf eBay when I'm bored, wasting time looking for stuff I don't need.
• Never again get all worked up over someone tricking a seller into selling privately (because I won't see it happen).
• Never again have to look for a seller who doesn't charge 7 dollars to ship a DVD.
• Never again pay for insurance and have my package mailed without it.
• Never again have to take a chance on getting a crushed / worn / incomplete item that's described as "like new".
• Never again have to slog through 6 pages of crap to sell an item.
• Never again get listing or final value fees raised on me.
• Never again have my listings removed without warning because of some stupid rule.
• Never again have to enter barely discernable codes in order to send an e-mail to someone.
• Never again be unable to see the bidding activity of a foreign bidder who is allowed to see mine.
• Never again have to worry about my account getting hijacked and wasting 12 hours explaining the issue over and over again to eBay support staff.

To me, that's a LOT of peace of mind. In return, all I have to do is:

• Give up bidding on rare collectible games through this one particular venue (which I seldom end up winning anyway).
• Give up trying to get bargains on newer console releases through this one particular venue (which is less fun than finding them in the offline world).
• Give up selling through this one particular venue (which admittedly has good traffic, but is it really worth all the crap I've listed above?)

Others will disagree, but to me this sounds like an excellent trade-off. Just imagine, the best deal I will ever get from eBay could be from leaving it.

This morning I signed into my e-mail and there was ANOTHER VeRO violation notice! That's right, after all the time and effort spent talking to people yesterday, explaining my situation over and over, they STILL managed to fuck it up. In addition, the rest of my valid auctions Tricia said would be relisted yesterday weren't, and I found a discrepancy between my current balance on the summary statement and the details. Not a big one, just a couple of dollars, but I'll burn in Hell before I lose any money over this mess.

Back to chat, and another hour and a half pissed away on this. I had two sessions going at once, one with VeRO and one with billing. The VeRO guy got all of my valid auctions back and assured me the VeRO violation notices would stop. The balance, the billing guy explains, is out of whack because my account is currently in the invoicing cycle. (They billed me my remaining balance when they suspended me.) He says this is a known issue they are woring to resolve, and assures me the numbers will clear up when the process is complete. You better believe I'll be checking up on it, and taking it up with my credit card company if the numbers are still wrong.

I am mentally and emotionally exhausted. I've given myself a lot of time to ponder this, both during times when I was furious and after I'd calmed down, and I think if I get any more hassles over this, I'm leaving eBay permanently. I will close my account with its 1500+ feedback and will never buy or sell there again. People who know me know that when I say things like this, I am serious. This was not a decision I made lightly. Getting suspended really made me take a good hard look at the role I let eBay play in my life. Would I still be able to collect without them? Perhaps, although certainly not as easily. I'd miss out on rare items, auctions by former Implementors like Brian Moriarty, and bargains on more recent console stuff I like to play. On the other hand, there have been times in the past I've felt like a slave to eBay, getting caught up in bidding and spending far too much money. The grief of the past few days alone makes me question whether it's worth it.

NOW I am pissed. Stay tuned, this page is my bitching soapbox.

UPDATE:

Okay, here's what's happened so far. I tried using the same LiveChat link from yesterday, and got someone who identified him/her/itself as "Golden G." (Last name "Goose", perhaps? Or maybe he's a rap dude and the "G" is for Gangsta? Word.)

Anyway, short story long, Golden tells me his department did not suspend my account and thus is not able to reinstate it, blah blah blah. You can read the whole chat transcript if you want. One interesting thing was that this individual chose not to tell me about the satisfaction survey I could fill out if I held down "Ctrl" when I closed the LiveChat window. Possibly because he saw I was very unhappy with the answers he gave me. Fortunately I remembered how to do it from yesterday. B-)

Golden mentioned asking in the general LiveChat, so I go back to eBay's main page and try there. It's a lot faster to get someone there, but same problem, nobody has the power to do anything. Janet (that's who I got) did try to reassure me by "checking on" my case and telling me Trust & Safety was reviewing it "right now", but long story short, eBay does not handle suspension issues over the phone or through chat.

Next thing I did was try the link in eBay's suspension notice e-mail, but that took me to this horrible page telling me I had to snail or fax them some documentation proving who I am, along with a statement promising never to list bogus items again. Screw that, it reads like I'm signing a confession for something I did NOT do. I poke around Help a little more and come up with this link, which allows me to appeal my suspension through e-mail. I hate this because there's no way to know how long it might take before they decide to respond, but at the moment it's all I've got.

It's hard to describe the frustration I'm feeling over this. It's like being falsely arrested for a crime, and not allowed to speak to anyone who can do anything to help free you. They say anytime someone compares something to Hitler or Nazis, they automatically lose their argument, but screw it, that's exactly what eBay looks like to me right now.

Much more to follow, I'm sure.

UPDATE #2:

I've made some more progress. Because one of the items was bought before eBay canned them, I had a buyer's e-mail. I contacted him, explained the situation, and asked for a copy of the auction if he still had it, or any information he might have on the hijacker. Even though we didn't have a valid eBay transaction. (Heh, what are they gonna do, kick me off the site?? B-)

This guy was awesome. He was very understanding about the auction (and I felt really bad because he told me it was a present for his wife's birthday), and he forwarded me a copy of the PayPal transaction. Yeah, he'd already paid for it, I'm working on getting that straightened out now too. Hopefully eBay communicates better with PayPal than they do with themselves, and the money was already refunded to this guy.

But the good news is, I got a name for the hijacker, "Guotong Wu", and an e-mail address, bmaoed@hotmail.com. He'd left my account information alone, and just entered his own PayPal e-mail address when listing the fraudulent auctions. So it looks like the people on SWCollect who suggested this were right. (If I haven't said this already, thanks to everybody there for their support, and for putting up with me while I deal with this, I really appreciate it.)

Not surprisingly Google came up empty. But it was enough to send to eBay and PayPal as proof that this wasn't me. Just for the hell, I e-mailed the guy and asked how he accomplished the hijack. I'm sure he'll respond as soon as eBay completely eliminates the possibility of fraud from their site. B-)

Hey, I can joke again, things are looking up. Still waiting on eBay to unfreeze my account, and I suppose I'd better check the bank account I use on PayPal and make sure I can still use that... I don't trust PayPal to not overreact just like eBay did. Fortunately I think I only had like $1.66 stored there.

Oh, and if anybody out there happens to know this Guotong Wu guy, and can tell me where he lives, I will pay you for the information.

FINAL UPDATE: (Unless more shit happens tomorrow morning.)

And just like *that*, things are back to normal.

I got a call (an actual phone call) from Tricia at eBay, who reinstated my account. She even said she'd reinstate the valid auctions I had running when this whole mess started, except they'd show up in my "Sold" tab where I could then relist them. Yes, apparently they can do that. I refreshed the page as she was saying this, and saw 3 of them appear right away. The others, I'm still waiting on, but she assures me they'll get here sometime today. I wish I shared her confidence.

I offerred her the information my detective work had turned up on the hijacker, but she said the appropriate department already knew about the PayPal transaction and was working with PayPal to pursue it. The buyer has already gotten an e-mail explaining how to go about getting his money back.

Tricia was unable to determine for certain how my account was compromised. She says there were two password requests on Monday. One was mine, but she says there was one other one. That one could have been when they reset my account and sent me a new password, or possibly by someone who got into my e-mail, she wasn't sure. I asked her if it could have been an eBay flaw, but she didn't seem to have any idea how that could have been. They couldn't determine what time the password requests happened either. Anyone else waiting to exploit eBay security, there's one weakness for you.

One thing I did get her to do was get her to pass on a complaint to a supervisor, to reprimand the person who reinstated my account the first time. She said that person was supposed to (but didn't) forward the info to the VeRO people so they would know not to suspend me because of the hijacker's listings. I asked if there was anything eBay planned to do to make amends for the time and trouble they cost me. One guess what the answer there was. Just for fun, I searched Help and found the page where you can permanently close your account. There's a contact link there where you can write them with your concerns before you actually go through with it, and I sent them a quick message. We'll see if I can squeeze anything out of them.

Our company has caller ID so I wrote down the number she called from (866-317-3229) but all it gets you is an automated recording. Tricia says eBay support staff's phones can only make outgoing calls.

In the end this just reinforces what I've always believed about eBay. 99.9% of the time things go very well. But that 0.1% when they are bad, they are abysmally bad. And I'm the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure there are many far bigger horror stories out there than mine.

My eBay account was hijacked early this morning. I tried to sign on repeatedly but it would not take my password. I also found a message from eBay that a bunch of listings had been automatically cancelled because the activity was suspicious. This was not a phish, it had my actual name and other info on it, and no links to bogus sites. The e-mail listed a bunch of DVD box sets I did not put up for sale. There was even one e-mail from a listing that ended, and when I looked up the item number it said the listing had been removed from their system. Apparently the hijacker listed a bunch of items at a bargain BuyItNow of $100. I was impressed, eBay was pretty damn sharp picking up on this.

I tried requesting my password by email, and the system accepted the answers to my secret questions, but I never got the password. I figured whoever took over my account changed the e-mail address, but none of my other information. Immediately I Googled for eBay's phone number and kept hitting "0" to coast through the automated system, until I got a message that their customer service is 8:30 - 5 PST. So I went online to eBay's safety center and reported my account as compromised, then started a LiveChat session. I caught this just after 8:00 AM CST, and there was a wait of about half an hour before I got a representative, which was close to LiveChat's estimate, but still long IMO.

Once I got a rep I had to verify my phone number so he could call me and see that I was the actual account holder, then we went back to chat. He had me confirm that I did not list the DVD box sets, copy-pasted some of eBay's standard answers about security and fraud, then reinstated my account with a temporary password.

He told me my email address had not been changed, so I'm guessing the message eBay sent out when I clicked "Forgot Password" just got lost in my spam filter. None of my contact information was touched, and I don't believe my password was ever changed, eBay simply blocked my account when they caught the suspicious activity. All of my existing valid auctions were left alone (both by eBay and by the hijacker). They did not bid on anybody else's auctions using my ID. My PayPal account was not touched, because it has a different password than the one I use for eBay. If you use the same password for eBay and PayPal, CHANGE IT NOW.

I have no idea how the person who hijacked my account got my password. Obviously I don't share it with anybody else. I am well aware of phishing e-mails and never respond to them, or click any of the links in them. I use anti-spyware and personal firewall software. Somehow, somebody got through. I'm in the process of calling all my credit card companies and verifying that there haven't been any fraudulent charges, and am on alert for possible identity theft. So far it looks like the eBay account was the only damage. Aside from the initial wait time I was very impressed with their response to my crisis.

Also, don't forget about the Postal Service rate increases that go into effect January 8th. I'll be keeping my tradition of charging only the actual shipping costs, but they will climb a bit higher. See USPS.com for full details.

great. You make me laugh. I WON A GAME AND YOU PUT A NEGATIVE FEEDBACK FOR ANOTHER ACTION. IF I SAY TO YOU FUCK YOU BUT I PAY AN OBJECT YOU WILL GIVE A NEGATIVE FEEDBACK, will not?. I've never had this problem with a seller. You are a typical american guy. Surely you vote for Bush. I've noticed it from your brain... You will remember about me, sure. what a bull shit...

Hi friend, I've won this auction but I've lost another one, Code Name ICEMAN. Could I offer to you about $30 for that game? So you could ship the two games together! Answer me asap! tnx

If you noticed this auction you might have been wondering if it's a legitimate release. (Thanks to Sven for pointing me to it.) I ran it by Ken Love, my Infocom contact at Activision, and here's his response:

Hey Chris. Good to hear from you. Legal has been notified. That is absolutely, positively a BOOTLEG product. I myself have sent an email to the seller telling him so and thave recommended that he / she stop the auction. I guess time will tell. I'll t ell you this though, look;s like they did a nice pirate job on the cover. Notice that the Acti logo is the wrong color though. "There's ya' a hint." Stay Cool and In Touch! - Ken

I'm holding off on blacklisting the seller until he answers my e-mail about where he got this from (or chooses not to answer, which would tell me all I need to know). Also notice his location, Joliet. If he is the one who made this, it means I've finally found a counterfeiter whose ass is close enough for me to kick.

UPDATE: Got a response from the seller:

Yes, I did purchase this a few months ago from someone on eBay, and since I have finally finished all the games, I decided to resell it. It does appear that this was a copy of the original disc, with the extra games added on.

Went to Hollywood, Sea World, Tijuana, and an area Renaissance Faire. Did some classic gaming at Dave and Buster's, and played Laser Tag at UltraZone in San Diego. Met Hugh Falk in person, saw his extensive collection, and had dinner with John Romero. (Was gonna pop by Eyal Katz's multiple addresses by surprise but didn't get around to it.) Wish I had the time to write a column about it all.

So. The seller was "bombarded" by private offers, and he freaked. Everybody who wrote him now has to wait on pins and needles for the outcome. There's bound to be some mistrust and upset feelings among collectors over this, and I'm anticipating hate-mail from the guy I just blacklisted. Everything is proceeding exactly as I wrote in that column almost 10 months ago. Hate to say I told you so, but...

Actually I love being able to say I told you so. In fact, I think I'll say it again.

Update: Okay, now domestic should be corrected too. When I fixed one problem I introduced another. (Heh, just call me eBay.)

Take a look at this auction. Scroll down to the questions from other buyers. But before you get mad at the seller, do a search and you'll see that he didn't actually sell to him off eBay. I asked what happened, and it turns out "Jeff" got all pissed at having his (fake) name publicly posted along with the question he asked! So the seller ended the original and relisted it.

What's interesting to me is the seller's response to the question. Very non-sequitur. It reads as if Eyal also asked him if he had any other Sierra games, but for whatever reason the seller left that question out but included his response to it.

From: "phil chappel" (happyboyphil@yahoo.com) (My comments in parenthesized italics.) Dan- (Yeah, he thinks I'm Dan, probably because the column includes comments from another collector who offerred insight, albeit in a far less venomous tone.) I was searching for a fish finder and ran across your site. I have been an e-bay member for several years and have over 2000 transactions. I have also been the finance manager at an automobile dealership for eleven years, so I am well aware of how frustrating it is dealing with the general public. After reading through all of your descriptions, disclaimers, and deadbeat articles, I have come to the conclusion that you are the biggest dipshit I have yet to encounter, in my fifty plus years. (I've known for years that I'm the biggest dipshit of them all. It's really gratifying to finally get recognition from others. Do I get an engraved trophy that says so? When can I expect it in the mail?) I have dealt with some real morons on e-bay, but you take the grand prize. You are obviously a troubled and angry individual. I cannot concieve of someone expending so much energy on such a ridiculous thing as you are. (Personally I find it ironic that you're expending so much energy chastising me for my column. Am I really worth all the effort you put into typing this hate message?) Do you think you are the Supreme Being who will sit in judgement of us all? I believe too many video games have left your brain like so many eggs-fried. Your feedback suggests to me that you are not only irresponsible! and ignorant, but extremely vindictive. You have an excuse for everything and everyone. ('Cept you, Phil. There's just no excuse for you. :) You leave negative feedback for people who have done nothing to warrant it and refuse to leave feedback for people who have paid you, in good faith, but have left you neutral because of your incompetence. (What? Okay, now you've totally lost me. I thought you said you found my page while seeking a fish finder. Is this really in response to some past transaction with me?) Your feedback record says it all. You are rude, impatient, and the worst kind of liar. (Can you give me an example of the best kind of liar?) I am a father of five, work fifty hours a week at my job, and sell over 400 items a year on e-bay. I still manage to ship my items the same week, and I also do it all by myself, so that claim of yours is pure bullshit. (Whoa, topic shift! I think you gave me whiplash there, Phil.) I don't even really know why i am writing this, I don't usually waste my time with this kind of thing. I guess it is because you are such a whining little brat. It is people like you who ruin the entire e-bay experience for us all, NOT the auction snipers or sellers who sell early. Personally, I have never sold early, but I see nothing wrong with it. If people are doing it and los! ing money, as you claim, then THEY are the losers, are they not? Two things I AM sure of, though. One, you have no reason to sit in judgement of all other e-bayers, except for your paranoia that somehow you are getting ripped off. Second, if I ever do decide to end an item early, and you get involved, I will do everything within the law to see it will be the last time. (Loud 'n' clear, Phil. Say, what's your eBay ID?) My advice to you is to get some professional help from some other psycho-babble idiot, because I truly believe you need it. (Yeah, you're probably right. I can find a way better psycho-babble idiot than you. :) Good luck and best regards. Phil ps. Perhaps if you spent more time expediting your shipping and less time with this you would avoid all this frustration. (Thanks for brightening my day, Phil. So did you ever locate your fish finder? If not, maybe you should get a fish finder finder!) (Buh-bye now. ^v^)

I've been getting a ton of Nigerian scammers contacting me through BidVille lately. One even tried to send me a (very bad and obvious) fake Western Union payment notice. So I've started having some fun with them in my own special way. Which is easy because none of them can spell or utilize grammar.

Yet another issue has arisen with IF-Legends, this time with the cookies used to manage logins. Let me know if you're having problems logging into the site, or if it's just me. I'm seriously looking at moving YOIS to another server if our provider doesn't fix this very very soon.

I'm still here, and still collecting, though I've gotten pretty heavily into console gaming lately. I've bought up a few computer-related items, but I haven't seen too much lately (in my price range) that I'm really after. I've gotten several requests for a new Shoppe column, and would love to do one, but I'm still about half burned-out on writing from earlier this year. We'll see, though.

Right now the main news is there's a problem with the PHP configuration on IF-Legends, and it's blocking YOIS from opening any remote URL's. I first noticed it when my automated eBay searches stopped working, then tonight I realized it's affecting the shipping cost pulls from the USPS as well. Have e-mailed the admins, hopefully will get it fixed soon. In the meantime you can e-mail me for a postage quote. Please include your shipping address, as well as the web address(es) of the item(s) you are interested in.

It's back to working now, and there shouldn't have been any data loss since access to the site was interrupted. Stefan tells me that their last successful backup was at 6:00 CET (Germany time) on the 28th, or 23:00 PM CST on the 27th. The last YOIS database backup also ran on the 27th. I didn't notice anything missing from the Shoppe transactions, but if you entered a trade request late on the 27th or early on the 28th, it may have been lost before I ever got to it. Check your user history page and let me know if anything is missing. Apologies for any inconvenience there.

You know what they say about laughter and medicine, so in case anybody else is feeling under the weather I thought I'd share this doozy of an e-mail I got the other day. Read through this abomination word by word and just TRY not cracking up. The caps and "alternative" punctuation style are all his. (Hers? Its??)

Hello seller, i will like to purchase this items,,,,,#: 9787402 ,,,,, from you bcos i need it to supply my client that they in need of the particular items and i will like you to mail me the tOtal cost of the items and i will do the payment via cashier check bcos you can cash the fund at the same day you got the the check and i will like you to mail me if you can get the total quality of the items bcos i will like you to supply me 5pieces of the items , you can mail me your full infomation with the total cost if you are ready to sell the product to me so that i can supply it to my client you can even call me on my mobil phone+2348029401605 thanks.

Bad news first. It looks as if the Vintage Computer Gaming Conference (VCGC) is officially defunct. We printed up some way-awesome invitations that looked like 5.25" floppies and were even sealed with a silver write-protect tab. These were sent out to several big-name classic game authors, but we didn't get a single reply before the deadline. I have mixed feelings. On one hand I'm a bit relieved, as the cost of putting on the show, in both money and time, was looking a bit steep. On the other, I'm quite disappointed that so many old-time authors would be so indifferent to a show looking to honor their contributions to gaming history that they wouldn't even reply, even just to say, "Sorry but I can't make it." Eh well. Maybe we'll try again in a few years, see if the climate has changed.

Lee Seitz writes (on SWCollect): "Boy, those Infocom games certainly are flexible. How many different ways are there of playing them now? Well, add one more to the list. To celebrate the new radio series, BBC Radio 4 has done a Macromedia Flash version of Hitchhiker's Guide. If you live in the U.K., you can even contribute graphics to it as part of a contest."

BidVille update: They were good on their promise to give me several days to revise my auctions. I cut out the links to my main and deadbeat pages, that should satisfy them. Despite this slightly oppressive turn, they're still infinitely less fascist than eBay.

"Hyperlinks to personal websites and other auction sites must be placed in your About Me section of Bidville. It is a T.O.S violation to have a link on your auction listings and all listings with these links may be subject to removal by our fraud division. Our apologies for the confusion and we thank you for your understanding in this matter."

What IS it with these auction places and their phobia of hyperlinks? I mean come ON, the main reason I moved to BidVille is to escape big-bully eBay, now BV is slowly turning into its punk-ass little brother. I guess I should be grateful they wrote and warned me. I asked them to give me a bit to get to changing the listings, as I have a lot of them and not a lot of time, so we'll see what happens. You'll hear about it here, I promise.

The other day a guy bid on a bunch of old PC software I had up on BidVille. Not collectible games or anything, just junk, stuff that didn't even meet the Shoppe's modest standards. He sends me this big long wordy e-mail ALL IN CAPS. Not once, not twice, but three times a scammer. And not because my reply wasn't fast enough, they were all within 10 minutes of each other. He says he has businesses in five different countries, the U.K. and four in Africa, and asks for shipping quotes to each one. I oblige.

Here's where it gets good. This morning he tells me he's prepared a cashier's check for $4000, he's going to send it to me. I'm supposed to cash it and send the money and stuff to his Nigeria address, less the $300 he's letting me keep for this absolute POS software he's buying.

Um, I'll take "Internet Scams" for $200, Alex.

Fun development on "jeffcowe": He is now NARU on eBay. I'm not sure if it was me and the other collectors reporting his off-eBay finagling, or maybe he dumped the ID himself after I blacklisted him, or he may have gotten caught bidding on several auctions using multiple identities.

Check it, two other recently created, recently terminated, high-rolling accounts have also been NARU'd: "*ryujin*" and "froddo711". Not 100% sure these are him, but if they are, a couple of them have bid high ammounts on the same auctions. Could be bid shielding, and maybe eBay caught on. (BTW, it's spelled "Frodo", you doof.) At any rate, he's back as "beamishwilly".

For your column on ebay: What if a member persuades a seller to change his auction to a BUY IT NOW option (placing other member's bargain offer as price)? you may want to add this...as being "cheating", too ;-)

I added a bit of info to the Cornerstone Database Database, now that I have my very own shrinked package as of this week. Also I've got the latest (minor) revision of the MobyScale up.

I also have the latest MobyScale changes up, following an intense discussion on SWCollect last week.

In other news I've got another column in progress, two actually, one dealing with the return of an old "friend". Part 2 of the Secret Column should be ready in another month or so as well. Haven't read the Secret Column yet? You're missing a good'un!

Heard from another person who has the "no-stone" variant of the Wishbringer grey, and have revised my theory about it in light of this new evidence.

• Howard Feldman and I had our first online chat to so some preliminary planning for a Software Collectors Expo. If you're interested in helping with this, please join or Yahoo! discussion group. Anybody willing to invest some cash toward putting on the event can get a share in the profits (if any).
• The CURIOUS scale is coming along nicely. We have people working on rarity scores for Adventure International, Avalon Hill, Electronic Arts, Epyx, Infocom, LucasArts, Origin, and SSI. If you have expertise with a particular company's games, please consider joining the CURIOUS Committee to help out.
• I recently bought up a large pile of photographs, slides and film negatives used in the creation of Infocom's early 1990s game packaging, and saved from oblivion by Ken Love at Activision. Going to take some time to catalogue everything, but there should be some duplicate pieces for trades (though I'm splitting the haul with Marco Thorek of Infocom-IF first). More news about Activision's forthcoming Infocom project once Ken tells me it's okay to blab.
• Fortran's Mt Drash is at $900 and holding, at least until snipe time.

Collectors are also encouraged to check out the CURIOUS scale, employing the latest wickedly cool acronym from GOTCHA. This is a work in progress for cataloguing the relative availability or rarity of games ("C" = Common, "U" = Uncommon, "R" = Rare, etc.), in a central data mining repository. Contributions are welcome if you have expertise with a particular company's games. Eventually I will be including CURIOUS scarcity ratings on Shoppe items' pages.

Plans are slowly getting underway for the first-ever Software Collectors Expo, in the same vein as Classic Gaming Expo and PhillyClassic, but geared more toward computer gamers. Right now we're looking at the possibility of joining forces with the Vintage Computer Festival. Watch this page for updates and announcements. If you're interested in helping with organizing the show, please join the discussion group.

I just got my Hayden games back from Dan Kitchen, whom I sent them to so he could transfer the disk contents to image files. I also asked him to autograph them for me while he was at it.

So, instead of putting them back in the nice sturdy box I sent them in, what does he do? He sticks them in a flimsy padded envelope. As a result, my once-mint Crystal Caverns now has a huge dent in it. Thanks a lot, Dan. I would have thought someone so interested in having a working copy of his game would have shown a little more care toward the original packaging, not to mention respect for another person's property. Last time I try to do an original author a favor.

So. Anybody got an [F/NM] Crystal Caverns? I'm offering primo trades.

Added Vintage Computer Marketplace to the links page.

Yep, someone must have told the little fella about my column update because he paid another visit to the Shoppe at about 10:50 my time last night. It's not on the for-sale page, ya twit!

Speaking of Malinche, I've finally gotten around to posting the concluding chapter to the Timmon counterfeiter column. (Hi, Timmon!) Read some actual e-mail that Pentari: First Light author Howard Sherman got from this loser (yes, apparently he CAN talk)!

Speaking of counterfeiters, I assume many of you have already noticed this putz hawking his self-burned Infocom CDs on eBay. A couple of people pointed him out to me, but I see these all the time -- people selling crappy CD-Rs full of out-of-print games for a mint price, and other people actually paying for them. The only difference is in this case they're all Infocom games. Here's the link if we want to mass-report him to eBay. It's tempting, but it doesn't really hurt collectors as there's no threat of anyone mistaking it for a real compilation, so jokers like this guy are just not worth my time to do a full-fledged column.

Speaking of columns, I'm holding off on the next one until ShopKo gets the remainder of my sale-item shelves in, so I can include good pictures of the new Shoppe. Depending how long that takes I may finish a different one in between. I've now got the overwhelming bulk of vault games bagged and shelved, and will be working to get my BidVille auctions updated with some reduced bids and a few new listings, over the next couple of days. Expect a batch of new Shoppe items to go up early next week.

And oh yeah, a guy from PC Gamer U.K. is doing an article on Infocom collecting and has sent me some questions. Will let you know when the publication date approaches.

I am SO FUCKING PISSED at eBay right now. Their POS server went down last night and my snipe (and probably a few other people's) didn't go through. Of course eBay didn't extend it, those fucking incompetents. This is why I don't sell there anymore.

So, that's a total of four confirmed copies in existence... and I know of one other collector who's been negotiating with a guy claiming to have two! People falsely claiming to own Mt Drash are more common than the game itself, though, so we'll see.

UPDATE: Okay, here's the story with the eBay Mt Drash:

The guy hasn't sold it yet. He pulled the auction when he realized the ultra-rare status of the game. That happened when he received only one bid, but a TON of e-mails from people asking him to close the auction and sell it privately. (I suspect everyone else was waiting to snipe so as not to draw attention to it.)

I came downstairs one morning to get another boxload of vault games to bag. One thing I had done due to lack of shelf space was to take some of the box lids off (they're those big rectangular office paper kind) and set some of the games I'd get to later on top of the lids. Because I'm shelving my collection in alphabetical order, see.

So anyway, I came downstairs and discovered that my cat had apparently been nosing around the disorganized vault area, and she had hwarfed on one of my Infocom folios! Either she got a sudden upset stomach and had to let it hurk up where she was, or she has something against Stu Galley's The Witness. Fortunately, (1) she just got the corner of it, the rest dribbled onto the storage box, and (2) I had the shrinkwrapped one on top of the opened one, so I was simply able to wipe the gastric ejection off with a damp cloth, and you can't even tell it happened. So everything's fine, and puddy-puke is now banned from the vault area when I'm not around.

THAT, fellow collectors, is why you should always leave your games in the shrinkwrap!

I finally unpacked the vault! Well, some of it anyway. About six boxes. Watch for a column tour of the new Shoppe, once I get everything up.

The waiting list has been cleared up; there were 5 users with invalid e-mails. I plan on doing this about once per year to keep the list clean. If you need to update your info, you can do it at your profile page, or, for slower results, send me an e-mail.

I've also had a couple of instances where PayPal didn't notify me when a Shoppe payment came through. Of course, they blame everyone but themselves... I notice this trend started right about when the eBay blob absorbed them. But anyway. After you click through their payment pages, you'll be given a choice of two buttons. Clicking the "return" one will take you back to a Shoppe page that will send me another notice, to ensure your payment isn't overlooked.

Well, I never got any replies to my e-mails about the DVD/CD-R games, though the seller did respond to a question about shipping from a different eBay ID, so he has been checking his mail. Which means he's choosing to ignore me. I gave this guy his fair chance to share his side of the story, but he has apparently decided not to, so now I can only share mine.

His eBay ID is timmon, and you can get his name, e-mail, and physical address from his web page through some of his completed auctions. "Timmon" uses private feedback to hide any complaints against him, and private auctions to prevent anyone (like me) from contacting and warning his buyers. Hoping some of them will see this, and realize before they pay that they've been ripped off.

That is, if in fact they were unaware that they didn't bid on an original package to begin with. (Not sure why anyone who knew they were fakes would bid, as the game code is widely circulated as abandonware.) Compare his Usurper auction with the real thing. I'm interested to know what the mysterious "Orb of Qyntarr" is, guessing a cheap marble he found and stuck in the case, but I don't want to give him $17 to find out.

Still gathering information, not ready to publicly expose this guy just yet -- I've learned my lesson from the last counterfeiter... the column on whom IS coming someday, I swear! -- but keep your eyes open, and if you see anything that looks fishy LMK and I'll nod or shake my head, as appropriate. (Just remember, a seller who keeps both his feedback AND his bidders' identities private is a seller who's hiding something.)

Wow, looking at the news page, it's been awhile since my last post.

I've just listed over 100 items, both Shoppe and non-Shoppe, on BidVille. I think this is going to be my new site for auctions, as I've just about had it with eBay and their idiotic fascist rules, and the constant outages, and their cheapskate half-price listing days. What the hell happened to the free ones, is that a bad word now? Anyone else who feels the same way, you're invited to join me, maybe we can start a small vintage software community on BidVille. Seller registration only costs $5.00 for six months, there are NO listing fees and NO final value fees, you get almost twice as long a title for your auction, and you can have auctions up for 30 days with automatic relists. (Oh, you'll still see me bidding on eBay because of the vast selection, but I refuse to pay for their seller "services" anymore until they get their act together.)

Working on reshelving and updating the Shoppe items. Expect an updated list the weekend after this one. Major update coming to the deadbeat list, too.

I've finally more or less caught up on the offers, and have refreshed the transactions to today's date so they won't expire. This enables me to finally take the "closed" message down (as I'm sure everyone is sick of looking at it). That also means your trades will expire if you leave them untouched, though. LMK if you get the automatic warning from the Shoppe and I'll refresh them again if desired.

If you check the Shoppe pages, you'll see a message that it's currently closed. This is because right now is a seriously overwhelming time for my Real Life. I've just moved and am still settling in, the Shoppe is in total disarray making it difficult to find anything, work is extremely busy and stressful, and I need to go away for a few days next week. In short, right now I simply don't have the time to put together packages or even answer e-mails personally, so I've stopped all Shoppe business until I do.

Don't worry, I've set it so your transactions will not expire, so you won't lose your items to anyone else. But that means even if you pay me, your items will not be shipped for another week or two (most likely two), until I get back and re-oriented. If this is not acceptable to you, or if you obtain the games you want from other sources, feel free to go ahead and cancel your transactions; I won't be offended. And I hope you will not take offense at not receiving a personal reply. It's not me ignoring you. It's me literally not having any time. Once that changes, you will start seeing responses from your Shoppekeeper again.

• Analog Computing: #1-10, 14-17, 53, 54, 56+.
• Antic: Pre-1984 (any issues), 1984 (Jan/May/July), 1985 (Jan/Feb/April/June-Oct), 1986+ (any issues).
• Computer Gaming World: Vol 1 (any issues), Vol 2 (#1, #2), Vol 3 (#2, #5, #6), Vol 4 (#5), #40, 51, 62, 72, 75, 76, 78, 79, 86-88, 92+ (certain issues).
• Computist: #67.
• Core: Vol 1 #4, any issues after.
• Questbusters: Vol I-VI (most issues), Vol VII (#1-8), #119+.
• Softalk: 1981 (any issues), 1982 (Jan-July), 1983 (Sept-Nov), 1984 (Sept-Dec), 1985+ (can't remember how long Softalk lasted).

Once I get settled in I'll be looking for a complete, working Apple IIgs system with a color monitor. Preferably something within driving distance so I can pick it up myself.

• Several shrinked Infocom folios, plus Fooblitzky, $36.89 - $55.09.
• $122.50 "New Zork Times Puzzle Winner" T-shirt.
• $142.50 shrinked Suspended mask.
• $222.50 complete-in-baggie Personal Software Zork I.
• And, of course, a new crown jewel for your Shoppekeeper's collection. (I had no idea this even existed!)

A few letdowns: I genuinely expected that shrinked Quarterstaff to go higher, and the Suspended too. But my guess is a former Infocom employee slash eBay seller is very happy right about now.

Read the JustAdventure+ press release for more details. I'll post info on the packaging here, once mine arrives. Could be a good future collectible to hold onto, considering how scarce Once and Future is today. (How many of you are still kicking yourselves for not picking up that one when you had the chance?)

My resolutions for 2003:

1. To update the site more frequently with Shoppe columns and informational vault pages.
2. To let fewer incorrectly listed items get on the Shoppe pages this year.
3. To acquire at least three games on my Top 10 Wanted list.
4. To finally get those damn scans of sale/trade items made.
5. To make my next deadbeat bidder on eBay feel my unrestrained, focused wrath. (Whoever you are, consider yourself warned.)

One of the collectors he scammed got a reply from the Israeli Police, which basically said because this is international fraud, they can't open an investigation based on e-mail complaints. You will need to report it to your local authorities and any national fraud agencies, who will then report it to Interpol if they decide an investigation is warranted. Interpol would act as the go-between for law enforcement in the two countries.

• Priority Mail (Domestic): December 19th.
• Express Mail (Domestic): December 21st.
• International Air Mail: December 16th.

International surface mail normally takes 4 - 6 weeks, so I can't guarantee packages sent this way will arrive in time.

So. For the time being I will keep PayPal support around, until the two sites become fully integrated, which eBay customer service informs me will occur before the end of 2002. At that point I may or may not cease accepting PayPal, depending on the response I get from the two parties after it's happened.

For those interested, here are the phone numbers I've been using (obtained from The Auction Guild's website):

• eBay (7:30 A.M. - 5:30 P.M., Pacific Standard Time): 1-800-322-9266
• PayPal (no time restrictions that I've found): 1-888-221-1161, or 1-877-6PAYPAL

(No names mentioned, and no hard feelings... Actually I'm grateful you found this... Just be aware you won't be able to do it anymore.)