I got my Rampart for $90 from a little thrift/consignment store a few miles from my house, but honestly its not that interesting a story.
The interesting story is where i found a Renegade and my Nintendo display case.
So my girlfriend and I recently started finishing up our garage and were looking to install some shelves, so we contacted a guy selling fixtures on craigslist. He told us to swing by the old factory/warehouse in Clinton, TN right outside of Knoxville. It was a building i'd driven by countless times and had wanted to explore for many years, and now that I've had the chance to, I'm not sure I'd go back.
This was the scariest god damned place I have ever been.
On the way in we passed an obstacle course of store fixtures, refrigerators, busted up rooftop AC units, and a stray Jetsons rocket kiddie ride that looked 20 years older than it was due to being out in the rain for what looked like a century or two. went inside the old factory and I have absolutely no clue how this building is even standing. Every window was smashed out and every square inch of 50's seafoam green paint was peeling. There were bugs, dust, puddles, whatever everywhere. But the real sight to behold was the stuff inside.
Thats about as exact as i can get with my description. Stuff. The inside of the building was easily an acre or two, and 90% of the floor space was covered in piles of junk. There was a box of warped and rotting vinyl records with a Muppet Babies Kermit doll haphazardly jammed in the box with it. A graveyard of at least thirty vacuum cleaners, each from a different decade. A Playstation store display shelf, but just one shelf, half buried in what appeared to be transistor radio parts and i think toothpaste boxes. Also present was the second scariest thing i would see that day: a coffin coated in about a half inch of dust. Occupied or not, I don't know, since i decided to leave well enough alone. I was already pretty sure i was going to get murdered, and I didn't particularly want it to be because of Dracula.
Eventually the guy who owns the building shows up. He wasn't very remarkable, a little creepy, kinda mumbly, but overall approachable enough. He gives us a brief tour and then leads us to the basement.
Oh god, the basement.
This is where i was going to die. I knew i was going to die down there. I had no doubts because the basement was every bit as sprawling yet cramped as the upstairs but this time there was no light. I flipped the flashlight on my phone on and tucked it into my belt to keep my hands free in case i needed to punch something or form a cross with my fingers (again, potential Dracula).
This place was phenomenal. It was like every K-Mart that ever closed down shipped their fixtures here by way of dumptruck. Piles upon piles of shelving fixtures created two foot wide pathways for us to narrowly escape from as we dug around trying to find a shelf that would maybe hold a Rubbermaid tub of christmas decorations. Oh, and did i mention the fleas? Because there were fleas everywhere, constantly gnawing at my exposed shins. I think at one time i had about ten on my legs in one go. Good times.
We didnt find anything that really suited our needs in this room. Most of it was just freestanding shelves or just entirely to heavy or cumbersome to actually use. And thats when the owner led us into a hallway that i swear to God HAD to be Silent Hill.
The hallway greeted us with a seemingly impermeable darkness as our host led us deeper into the abyss. Rotting cardboard boxes lined the way for us, holding molded toys of many different decades. Up ahead i saw the only light that managed to get into the basement, a dim, pale-green beam of weak sunlight peeking in through a broken, moss covered window, beaming a horrendous spotlight onto what may very well be the single most unsettling thing i have ever seen.
The man guiding us drew our attention to a heavy iron set of shelves, which my girlfriend feigned interest in. I knew she was frightened by the ambience of the whole place from her tense glances and silent "Oh my God"s she shot me every few seconds when the man's back was turned. I personally found the place, while nightmarish, incredibly fascinating, and i spent most of my time studying the things i could make out in the dark. But there in that milky bit of sunlight brave enough to peer into the abyss, was hard evidence that this place was even less welcoming than i had anticipated.
There was a room off to the side, i'd estimate 20 feet by 20 feet, lined with broken factory equipment, piled upon each other, leaning precariously as though at any given moment it would collapse. In the middle of the room was a pile of broken crayons and colored pencils about 3 feet in diameter and 2 feet high, as if you had dumped the contents of an entire elementary school's students collective pencil cases in one room. Laying on the floor in front of the pile was a small trail of old style printer paper, the kind with the holes on the side to be spool fed. The trail of papers led from my feet to the crayon pile and quite horrifically bore large child-written letters on them, saying:
3
2
1
YOUR DEAD
(I TOLD YOU)
I didn't try to hide the fact that I thought i was going die. The man leading us mumbled something about "these damn kids get in here and play around and break stuff mumble mumble" and and kicked the paper off to the side. While he was kicking it I noticed one of the windows had something painted on it...
RUN
GET OUT NOW
The words were black, and framing a...oh holy shit, they were written next to a bullet hole in the glass. "Let's, uh, let's go back upstairs now," my voice wavered as i power walked back the way we came, hoping some supernatural force hadn't altered the floorplan in the time we had been there.
I had never been so thankful to see natural light before in my life. I was ready to grab my girl by the hand and break into a full sprint out of there the second the path was clear. And just as soon as i carefully planted my foot on the ground after clearing a pile of broken broom handles the man said something that made me freeze in my tracks.
"I got more stuff in the other building too."
I'm an idiot. Im a god damned moron. I am stupid beyond belief.
"Yeah, okay. Lets check it out."
We walk past the HVAC units, the fridges, and the worlds loneliest Jetsons ride to the other decrepit and crumbling testament to the industrial revolution. I was surprised when no bats flew out when the man opened the massive shutter doors on the building and somehow more surprised by the mass amounts of mannequins and the scary ass mr. and mrs. claus, but the real treat was that this building was loaded with stuff I was actually interested in. A pile of Star Wars toys nestled between hot dog carts greeted us and led us further into the second warehouse. A taxidermic tiger loomed high on the shelves above us. Glass display cases were every couple of feet, begging me to line the shelves with toys. But towards the middle of the room were the two things that greatly caught my eye.
Renegade sat next to a Bases Loaded cabinet (maybe? It was baseball, i remember that much at least), slightly worn, but it was hard to make out the condition in the dark. It was also currently coated in christmas garland, making it harder to get a decent look at it. I could see that it was definitely dusty and missing a button or two, but maybe, just maybe, I'd finally have my first arcade machine. It was a dream come true.
"$500 for the vidyuh game," he grumbled.
Pass.
We dug some more and came across an old store fixture, a sliding glass door display case from the early NES era, emblazoned at the bottom with the classic black, gray and red lines of the late 80's. A little wear along the bottom, but aside from that it was perfect! I could finally have a place to put my classic gaming stuff that wasnt currently in use!
"$200 for the case."
Pass.
But then, my girlfriend tapped me on the shoulder and showed me her phone. Apparently this glass case was from a store that I can't recall the name of that shut down in the early 90's. When they shut down, Nintendo ordered their cases returned to them to be destroyed. Somehow this one had managed to escape its fate and was now valued in the ballpark of $500 if i recall correctly.
We loaded it into the truck, and never, ever returned.