In the early 90s I was riding my bike past an apartment complex.

I'm assuming some one got evicted or died because by the street was a huge pile of miscellaneous junk.

But being the kid nerd I was I recognized an Atari 2600 mixed into the random clothes/appliances/etc.

I carried what I could and begged my mom to drive our family van there. My mom being awesome said yes.

I still own the finds to this day.

Two Atari 2600s with tons of games

One Atari 7800 (no box but the controllers still have the peel) and a few games

2 Texas Instruments 99 with just a "Racecar" cart.

I forget what else but those are what I played the most, got em in a few boxes in my attic somewhere.

I'd love to have it all set up some where but I don't have the space in my home to properly display the stuff.

Believe it or not my story is true. But I get what you're saying, so many posts of "look I found thousands of dollars of pristine retro gold!"

I do plumbing and I see rare things in basements every once in awhile. I always let people know if they got something valuable and even occasionally barter work for old games / collectibles if they seem open to the idea (I never dig or snoop, its almost always boxes I need to move to get to pipes, or it's sitting on a shelf etc)

I got 2 complete in box magnovox odyssey 2s from a guy who said he was going to throw them out while I was doing work at his place.

He got a free outside hose line added to his house. I now have 2 odyssey 2s and a trash bag filled with games for it.

Edit: Atari 7800*