Hi guys, LONG time lurker first time contributor. This is my first attempt at doing anything like this and my old iphone does not take the clearest of photos, so please take that into account when leaving your comments. My motivation for doing this is two fold, an overabundance of free time and a genuine desire to give a little something back to this great site that has helped me pass countless hours skipping down memory lane with your great articles.


Having just spent two mind numbing weeks in hospital eating my microwaved slabs of meat and listening to my elderly room mate yelling answers at Pat Sajak while watching "The Wheel" I had time to think..... LOTS of time to think. Sure I thought of loved ones, the meaning of life, my own mortality but more importantly if I would be out in time to preorder my WiiU and who would win this season of Big Brother. But the thought that resonated loudest was that of my spare room and the sudden desire to organize it.

And now that I am currently off work and at home with nothing but time on my hands, I've decided this would be the perfect time to sort through my disaster of a spare room that holds my extremely unorganized videogame collection. My collection is a mixture of items saved from my childhood and items that I have purchased as an adult. I gather my items from garage sales, thrift stores, and online shopping. I honestly have probably forgotten the majority of the contents held with in those glistening Rubbermaid containers and beat up cardboard boxes and I invite you to join me as I systematically dive through the contents of each box and share in the surprise and horrors that we may find with in.
Entrance to the "HOARD"

Some shelves

Wall of Rubbermaids


Please do not adjust your screens, you are not looking at an episode of Hoarders or Buried alive this shameful disaster area is my personal chamber of horrors. This is my spare room which started as a place for me to store and organize my collection but quickly changed into this low budget thrift store shortly after my lovely girlfriend decided she was moving in. This room is now a catch all and it is now my personal mission to return this room to its former glory and show my girlfriend who really wears the pants in this house. Of course I will be asking her permission first and will be requesting that my testicles be removed from her purse temporarily before operations commence.

OK, the Warden has left for work, the coast is clear, let the mission commence. I figured the Rubbermaid’s were a good a place as any to start and this big one was on-top so it is the first to be investigated.
First Rubbermaid


First out of the box are these two BIG wall decorations, the first is of Mario in his kart and the second is of our boy Link. I remember receiving these as a gift one Christmas not to long ago. That’s another thing I forgot to mention, a lot of my collection I have received as gifts. Whether it be Christmas, Easter, birthdays, or Kwanzaa. I can always count on a stocking full of random videogame related key chains, band-aids mario shampoo and pez dispensers. Being an avid gamer since I was in diapers it just became the easy goto thing for my loved ones to get me as gifts.

Wall Decorations


Next out of the box we have a small sampling of some of my UFC paraphernalia Firstly we have the foam champion ship belt sporting Brock and GSP on the packaging. Being a wrestling fan I really marked out for big Brock when he hit the UFC I had visions of him powerbombing fools and finishing with his “F5”, god that would have been great. Next we have Kimbo Slice sporting his dew rag and Rashad Evans who looks to be flexing his 24 inch pythons. These were all purchased from my local WalMart and I know I have a lot more buried somewhere deep with in the hoard.
UFC belt


Kimbo Slice

Rashad Evans


Next we have a mixture of Random items and figures, lets see here we have Large Toad, a Guitar hero guy, sonic (tails is in here somewhere), Freddy Kruger mask and glove, star wars set of key chains, wario hat and stach, a mario kart remote control car, Tails from sonic and a so bad its good boot leg knock off of dude love. Dude looks to have much bigger arms and a much smaller gut than Mick Foleys character and also appears to be sporting at least one extra chromosome as well. “I can count to potato”.

Toad


Guitar Hero guy


Sonic

Freddy Glove


Freddy Mask


Wario Hat

Remote control Mario kart

Bootleg dollar $tore Dude love

Very cool I totally forgot I even owned these Call of duty figures. I remember buying these from a store in my area called Giant Tiger (basically a very ghetto target). I saw them in the discount bin with all sorts of random crap for $5.00 each and I had to have them. I remember they had a ton of them and they were all very unorganized and mixed up, I remember seeing the British special ops guy and the flamethrower guy so I was determined to find the other two for the set. After a little digging and a lot of cursing I had found the other two and off to the checkout I went.
Call of Duty


The cool thing to note about this purchase is that it wasn’t until I got them home that I noticed that the toy gods were smiling on me this day. You see these figures were a little rarer than normal because they were all sporting there golden guns. I hadn’t noticed any difference in the store, and it was just by dumb luck that I had managed to get them all with there golden guns (flamethrower guy doesn’t come in a golden gun version). I did a little checking online and a complete set with there golden guns is pretty hard to come by. These are the moments I love when buying, scoring items on the cheap and a little rarity just makes them seem cooler than they actually are.

COD close up



Now peering down into the depths of whats left in the bottom of the box we see what appears to be a stocking stuffer grave yard. We have the obligatory mini mario candies, mario figures, mario toys, mario and yoshi pez dispensers just general dollar store stocking stuffer knick knacks and crap. I don’t want to bore you with all of this but I took pictures of some of the more note worthy finds. I thought these mini consoles were pretty neat, I think they held gift cards from EB games when I originally received them. The mini xbox, PS3 and Wii, are cute the wii mote is from burger king if I remember correctly and the Atari and Nintendo Power mints were stocking stuffers as well.

The scraps

Mini consoles


Controller candy tins


I saved my personal favourites for last. I have three minty condition foam WWF belts that I found at my local thrift store. I think I paid $1.00 a piece for them at the time. These are items I had and loved as a kid but were either lost in a move or destroyed when I smashed them over one of my cousins heads while playing “wrasslin” in our back yards. These belts are in great condition considering how old they are and have no rips or tears in the foam at all, the decals are still minty fresh and bright with no cracking or fading.

WWF Belts












When I was a kid my cousins and I had two loves, Nintendo and Wrestling. If we weren’t in the basement playing megaman2 or contra. You could find us in someones back yard wearing our homemade tag team champ belts that we made out of cardboard and markers and we would be getting the snot kicked out of us by the neighborhood kids. We only stopped when our mothers called us in for the night or some over zealous kid got a little rough and someone was in tears. Actually a very good friend of mine grew up to be a very well know independent wrestler in my area he even had some WWE wrestlers at his wedding. So as you can see our wrestling roots run pretty deep in our circle and finding these belts brought back all those great childhood memories and I had to have them.
Table shot


I hope you all enjoyed my first attempt at this there is a lot more to dig through I have a ton of boxes to open and shelves to explore. Also the retro factor will get better the deeper I dig into the pile, I have boxes of Atari and Intellivision games complete in box, I have the first issues of Nintendo powers, boxed Atari systems etc....tons of retro games toys and crap, just be patient and it will come. And please leave your comments and let me know what I can do to improve on my next article.

Thanks for reading and remember the Pork Sword is throbbing.......