In the late 1990s I moved to Long Island from upstate New York.   In Ithaca I was very active outdoors with hiking and mountain biking.   It just wasn't the same walking the greenways next to the crowded motor parkways, so I decided I needed a hobby.   I thought it would be fun to collect old computers, but I quickly found out that collecting them took a lot of space and money, and after setting them up once, there wasn't much to do.   Some of first home computers doubled as video game consoles - collecting the media was more entertaining, but it was still very hard to find. While scouring garage sales and flea markets I kept coming across tons of media for true home video game consoles like the early Atari's and Nintendos and started collecting those. It was easy to fund the video game collection by selling repaired systems and duplicate game cartridges. 

With a simple website and the Internet. It was surprising simple to make sales using Search Engine Marketing, a brand new advertising method.  There was very little competition and AtariAce.Com quickly brought in sales.  For a couple years I mainly worked on the Atari 2600 and during the Christmas holiday it took all my free time to get systems up for sale.  One holiday my parents were in town and my father became very interested in the business, enough to start helping with Atari 2600 Systems.  Within 18 months my Dad was doing all of the Atari 2600s allowing me to collect and sell other systems including Nintendo, Sega, and Sony.

In 2007 I all but stopped collecting and selling Video Game systems as Crowd Fusion and my second child started to consume a tremendous amount of time, however every Christmas my father still gears up the advertising and the site for an Atari 2600 rush.   This past year it was hard to see any interest coming with this now 30 year old system and we were pretty sure that it was time to close up shop .. and then Lexus came along with this commercial.

Not only did sales start immediately but we sold a lot of Centipede as well.   I'm sure my father is struggling everyday with whether he should stock up on systems for next christmas, or accept that the risk / reward has become too high.  

Over the last 10 years I've built a large collection of vintage video games, systems and accessories.  I've built up some very nice pieces that could turn into a great traveling museum piece.   I haven't given up on adding to the collection, but I've definitely taken well deserved break as family and work have made demands.   I'm glad I have a hobby but most of all I'm glad that my father and I have been able to work on it together.