Local craigslist ad... WHY WHY WHY!?

[elkameleon]

I had 40 Playchoice 10 carts stolen out of my vehicle last night in Minneapolis. These carts represented about 10 years of collecting and searching for rare titles, and sadly will probably be thrown out or traded for nothing. If you are looking at this ad, you look at arcade games in Minneapolis. Please do the right thing, if these become available report them to the Minneapolis police. There were very rare titles, Basically every PC10 game except Shatterhand, RBI Baseball, Ninja Gaiden III, and Solar Jetman.

That was a post I found while looking for some arcade games. Why the hell would you have 40+ Playchoice 10 games in your car?! If I had a collection like that, they'd be in a little bit of a safer place. In fact, during the winter I remove the whole board from my Playchoice and store it in the basement over the winter (my cab is in the garage).

[SavannahLion]

I'm just guessing but....

There's this weird phenomena where people have excess of something that's relatively rare elsewhere that they just treat it as... meh.  Well... maybe meh isn't quite the right way to put it.

Let's say that you manage to gather together twenty-five examples of Game X from say some part of a estate lot, you're more apt to leave them on your couch or coffee table than someone who scrounges for ten years just to get one example of Game X. He probably didn't really have them in his car for a good reason (ie, taking them somewhere to be sold?) he was probably just dragging his collection to his buddies house or some party to show off just how big of a dork he really could be.

He was also probably relatively younger. Yeah, he may have spent ten years collecting them but he sure as hell didn't act like it. I used to trade/loan/borrow console games when I was much younger. All in all, I've had about half a dozen games stolen/destroyed/"lost" from me (not counting the ---smurfette--- of an ex that stole nearly half my collection). When you're younger, you tend to treat things differently than if you're older. Nowadays, I rarely display a large part of my collection and I most certainly don't let the vast majority of the people in the Real World™ even know I play games. Given the stories of PCB's stolen right out of the trailers/truck beds, I don't even let the truck out of my sight any more when I'm transporting.

No matter how I mull this over, I can't stop thinking what the ---fudgesicle--- he was doing carrying around forty (shouldn't it have been 50 if he was missing four titles?) PC10 carts in his car?

[SavannahLion]

If I had a collection like that, they'd be in a little bit of a safer place. In fact, during the winter I remove the whole board from my Playchoice and store it in the basement over the winter (my cab is in the garage).

Why?? Is your garage really that wet in the winter?

[Vigo]

If I had a collection like that, they'd be in a little bit of a safer place. In fact, during the winter I remove the whole board from my Playchoice and store it in the basement over the winter (my cab is in the garage).

Why?? Is your garage really that wet in the winter?

In Minnesota, it's not so much the moisture, but the cold. Freezing over a course of a MN winter can cause havoc on that kind of electronics. I'm sure elkameleon would be doing the same with the monitor if it was even a somewhat reasonable task to do each year.

Of course, the water can be an issue too. If you garage a car after it snowed, the snow will melt and make a large pool on the garage floor. You have to be careful about a wood cab on that floor.

[elkameleon]

You pretty much nailed it Vigo. When it gets to be -30 degrees out, that's not always good for electronics, I don't want to risk that it may be "ok". If the wife would let me, I'd have the arcades in the house, but we just don't have the room right now until we find a house of our own.

[SavannahLion]

Right.... I would differ on that opinion, but it's not going change anything so do what you want.

[Vigo]

There are a couple issues with the cold, and an environment like a garage in MN is very damaging because the temperature changes very rapidly with daytime/ nighttime and a giant door opening and closing every day.

The first problem is the cold itself. Heat causes matter to expand, cold causes it to contract. Conducting metals are extra sensitive to this principal as well. When you have an electrical board that can freeze and thaw multiple times a day, the soldier points will weaken and crack after repeat exposure to freezing. Items with batteries can sometimes burst too from the cold. I have lost a couple portable CD players from leaving them in my car overnight. I have also had cans of coke explode in my car overnight, too. But that is another story.

The second problem is the condensation. Since you are often bringing in a vehicle covered in snow, there will be a little moisture in your garage. The actual humidity is really low, but it is enough to cause a frozen circuit board to capture condensation when it warms. A little condensation doesn't do much harm, but when the temperature drops again, the condensation will turn to ice and bind on the board. Water expands as it turns to ice, and everything on the board can warp a little. Repeat the process after a couple winters, and you can have real damage. That's why we have to drain out our water spigots on our house each year and insulate them - otherwise the house pipes will burst.

Winter sucks. 

[BobA]

+1 for Vigo.  I am in Edmonton, AB, Canada and it gets fxxxing cold.  You cannot leave PC parts or a laptop in your car even if it is in an unheated garage.  A carPC will not work in the winter when average temps are -30 C or -22 F. We don't even talk about extreme temps as -40C is the same as -40C. The cold will damage anything stored outside due to the extreme changes that the parts go thru.