stolen collections

[severcool]

Has anybody had any luck trying to track down a thief that stole their collection?  I've been searching eBay and Craigslist, but haven't come up with anything.  A few weeks ago, I went to drop off more junk at my storage locker.  I noticed the padlock was gone.  Unfortunately, the unit was broken into.  Luckily, most of my stuff is junk and old clothes that I just can't seem to part with.  I'm a bit of a packrat when it comes to sentimental possessions.  A few of the noteworthy items stolen were my empty original boxes to my NES and SNES collections and tubs of about 350 CDs.  The games are all at my apartment cased up and the CDs are ripped to my computer, so it's not a total loss.  However, it sucks getting your stuff stolen.  Does anybody have any advice on where to look to see if I could find my stuff for sale?  The State Police are involved, but I don't have much faith in them catching someone for such a relatively small crime (although I was one of six units hit).  There really aren't any pawn shops around to check.  Any advice would help!

One thing I did find humorous is that they didn't touch the open box of duplicate Atari 2600 games that was out in the open.  I guess everyone has Combat and Bowling in their collection...

[segamer]

It's been about 5 years now but my entire video game collection was stolen. I had very unique items but I never had luck finding them. I looked at craigslist for months and called all the local video game stores. Nothing, natha, zippo!

[monjici]

Maybe your empty boxes got trashed.

A trend I suspect in my area is people stealing from one big city, then do a road trip each weekend to sell stuff in another big city (about 150 miles/ 200 km apart).
So don't just check local. Good luck.

[Megatron]

A large chunk of my collection got nabbed back in 2009 when I was just starting to get heavy in to it.  Luckily, I knew the thief and figured out who did it and was able to confront him with the police (who are sold old USMC buddies of mine) before he got rid of any of it.  Got all of it back within 72 hours. 

That said, at his place there were piles of stuff for different markets.  Gamestop, craigslist, ebay, and  pawn/retro game stores.  He also had my more rare items in their own section since those would likely the titles stores would be on the lookout for.
What I was able to figure out is that the common stuff he was going to sell in chunks because who WASN'T trading in Gears of War 2, Ha;lo 3 and Mass Effect in 2009?  Nothing suspicious there.  Same with ebay and craigslist.  He was selling the games in sets, with some of his own (stolen or not, I don't know) thrown in.  Again, mostly popular titles. 
The one thing that made a lot of sense, anything with distinctive marks - tape, marker, broken pieces, etc can be identified.  These were separated out from the rest, possibly to get rid of out of town, or fix in order to avoid being recognized.  That's actually how I was able to convince my law enforcement friends he had my property - I convinced him to send me a picture of something, and in the background is a PS3, with a chip on the corner. The same chip one of the officers was able to recall my model having

TLDR - if your games had distinctive flaws or markings, call around to local shops and let them know this was stolen and if (for exammple) an Earthbound with sharpie "Justin Family" on the back comes in, they'll know it's stolen.  It's a long shot, but if the thief(s) are smart, they aren't just going to try and dump it all at once.  What they didn't just throw away, that is.

[larryinc64]

I just had a awful thought of the went "oh these boxes are all empty" and tossed them 

What kind of games were the boxes too?

[severcool]

Most of them were old NES and SNES boxes.  There were series like Double Dragon, Mario, Zelda, Contra, Wizards & Warriors, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, etc.  Some were N64 or Gameboy.  Most were in pretty good condition.  I had the habit of not throwing boxes out as a kid and never knew that stuff might be valuable one day.

[FritzWhite]

Someone broke into my car a couple years ago and stole over $300 worth of DS stuff

[reklen]

     Last summer someone broke into my house, stole my laptop, which was connected to the TV, my white Wii U, and my PS3.  For some reason he didn't take the XBOX One, the 360 or the Atari XE.  He also stole some collector coins and stuff, probably 800.00 worth of stuff.  I know it had to be random because if the person knew me, all my better stuff was downstairs.  Besides feeling violated, the thing that made me angry the most, was that my insurance told me I had a 1000.00 deductible and they didn't steal enough stuff for me to be reimbursed  The weirdest thing was, I was on vacation home all week, and was only gone from my house for an hour.  The cops came right away, and even brought the forensic guys with them, they dusted for prints.  The cops liked my game collection.  Unfortunately,  I didn't get anything back.  The Laptop was the worst, because I had a lot of pictures and personal stuff on it.  Luckily I had backup disks of most of that.   

[Taketheword]

This is the most depressing TCP thread.

[BadChad]

I actually had my apartment broken into 3 weeks before X-Mas last year. They must of been complete idiots because all they got away with was my PS4 (with just the power cord, no controllers, games or anything), 3 regular Wii systems (none of which they took any cords for, just the units) and my Last Guardian Collectors Edition I had just bought about a week before. Lucky for me, I had left the game itself at my girlfriend's place since she wanted to watch me play it.

As much as I was pissed, I have to count my blessing as it seems they didn't even set foot into my game room. Or if they did, they had no idea what they were looking at because nothing was missing and that's where all the real value was. I've got 10 plus years of collecting in that room with a ton of rare stuff.

Since then, I've moved because just the though that whoever broke into my apartment may be aware of just how much I have to take vs. what little they actually got out with and the possibility of them planning to come back weeks for another attempt, days or months down the line was something I couldn't shake. They must of been into drugs or something though because they went into y medicine cabinet which didn't have anything worth taking in it. I don't even take Aspirin when I have a headache.

On the humorous side, I had to tease my roommate afterwards because his X-Box One was on the TV stand literally right next to my PS4 and they didn't take that. I told him "You know you made the right choice when someone breaks into your apartment and steals the PS4, but leaves the X-Box One sitting right beside it!"  

[sheep2001]

Lol - but to be fair, they'd have needed a forkilift to get the XB1 out. 

[BadChad]

Fucking hilarious!

[e_brugal]

Lol

I don't have dreams a lot, but when I have a dream 95% of them are related to someone breaking into my house and stealing my collection, that's since I got married and got my own apartment 5 years ago.

In 1998 someone broke into my parents house, turning everything upside down and throw everything to the floor. When we arrived home and we see the disaster, each of us run to their room to see what was missing. When i got to my room, there it was, my PS1 sitting on top of a bunch of clothes on the floor, they took the TV, DVD,  clothes, shoes, perfumes, etc. But left my PS1 and all the games.

[Moviefan2k4]

If your storage place has security cameras, you could always check the footage to get a face for your thief, then report him or her to the police.

[severcool]

Moviefan2k4, I wish it had cameras.  It's kind of in the middle of nowhere (although right off the highway) and doesn't have electricity past the first building.  My unit is in the last building, of course.  The owner is putting cameras in now.