She promptly refunded me my payment and said her daughter had ruined the set of books in a nasty grape juice accident. Yeah right.
Well needless to say I haven’t been in too much of an eBay friendly mood as of late. My mood has mellowed a bit since then. Part of the reason had to do with dealing with another eBay seller.
As I also mentioned here the other day I’m back in a gaming group that will be running a Pulp flavored Top Secret /SI game after the New Year. As a result, I’ve been on eBay trying to tie down the loose ends in my Top Secret/SI collection. I found a real great price on a bunch of books from a local seller. After winning the auction I found that the seller actually had a game store in the small town of Colfax about 40 minutes up the hill from Sacramento. He agreed to waive the shipping if I wanted to come by and pick the books up. I’d never been to Colfax and what red blooded gamer would turn down an offer to visit a game store? So I tossed one of the minions in the backseat of the Sonata for company, cranked up the .38 special greatest hits CD, and headed for the hills.
Colfax turns out to be a clone of Mayberry from the Andy Griffith show. Not a stoplight in the whole town. From what I saw of it the word most fitting Colfax would be quaint.
The EBay seller (Chris) has a small (Quaint) store called “Ship it!” Which you may think is an unusual name for a game store until you see that 1/3 of the store is actually a mailing outlet for local parcels the other 2/3 of the operation is dedicated to games, action figures, and comics. Chris knows his stuff when it comes to managing a store (he's been selling games in a town the size of "Hooterville" for 5 years so he must be doing something right). Not a foot of space was wasted, but you didn’t feel cramped. All the games were nicely displayed, with a good selection of board games; RPG’s, cards and clicks. There were also racks of action figures and bins of back issue comics. It was a little slice of geek paradise. He has a room off to the side where some local kids where gaming and he has the business sense to sell snacks and sodas to keep them nicely sugared up during their stay.
He greeted me with a handshake and had my items ready to go. He won extra cool points for loading my son up with some freebies for him and his brothers. We talked shop, gaming, comics, 4th edition, old school games, EBay, and more. I could have stayed there all day. When we finally did leave, not only did I have some great Top Secret /SI books (a couple still in shrink-wrap) but also a Marvel dice game for the kids, a stack of comics, 5 boosters of Mage Knight figures (I don’t play Mage knight but he was selling them for two bucks a pop. I can always use more miniatures), and two sets of Chessex dice for the upcoming D&D game with the minions. I went over budget to be sure, but what the hell. All in all it was a good trip and I will be back-I have my eye on several comic runs I saw in one of his bargain bins, so I know I’ll be making another run up there after New Years.
For those of you in the area; the store is called
Ship it!
34W Church Street
Colfax, Ca.
10-6 M-F
10-2 Sat
(530) 346-7374
Sounds like heaven! Good find, Jeff! And Colfax looks a beautiful place too... just makes me wish all the more that we had places like that over here in the UK.
ReplyDeleteAh Jeffy!
ReplyDeleteYou live in a land of wonder!!
That sounds like a great little store and a nice little town.
It's pretty cool to see a Masonic Lodge there in the main street, too! (Note the sign, right next to the building with "Drugs.")
ReplyDeleteA rare breed; they get persecuted by the Churchies just like us D&D-ers!
Colfax is a great town to live in, and Chris's shop is one of the bright spots (along with Shang Garden, our =excellent= Chinese restaurant and For Pizza's Sake, our Take n' Bake pizza place.)
ReplyDeleteAs to places like this in the UK, you've got them over there. Here in Colfax we just run the highway along the edge of town rather than straight through the middle like, say, the town of Battle.