Keeping classic, and orphaned, video games... alive!
Chase the Chuckwagon - Complete Interview
Jumping on the Chuckwagon! When you hear the words "online" and "auction", what's the first thing that comes to mind? Except for the two smart-alecks in the back of the room screaming out "Ubid" or "Shopgoodwill", most likely the name "eBay" will pop into your head. As the largest auction site on the Web, we've all probably perused its virtual thrift tables for video games, memorabilia and a variety of other trinkets and doo-dads. As eBay has grown, since its inception back in 1995, it was inevitable that some of the negatives one would find in real world would make its way into the virtual along with some hi-tech twists that can make the experienced shopper groan. High opening bids for 8-bit games you know are only worth two bits, auctions that have little information with sellers that offer even less, high shipping for items you know could be sent to you in an envelope with two stamps, finding items in sections that are fairly unrelated to what the item is...you get the idea. On the seller's side you've got ever-increasing fees and lots of options pushed down your throat that can nickel and dime you to diminished profits. Are there other options out there that can cater to an intrepid video game collector?
Well, gentle reader, "So Cal" Mike has your answer and it's personified in his video game auction site ChaseTheChuckwagon.com. Mike, a video gamer, collector and long time seller on eBay, was getting a bit fed up with the policy changes and the fee hikes that were happening at "Big Auction". Basing his site’s name on a rare Atari game that helped inspire the concept of game collecting (as Chase The Chuckwagon is a “holy grail” among collectors), Mike set out to deliver a service that specialized in the auctioning of video games that didn’t take a large chunk out of your cash box. Along the way, the fruits of his labor bore a strong online community along with an expanded selection of items beyond video games yet still connected to the collecting desires of the Chuckwagon’s members.
So pull up a stump, grab a plate of biscuits n’ beans and gather around the Chuckwagon to hear what Mike has to say about this amazing new venture.
VGT: At the time of this interview, you’ve got over 1,200 members and over $45,000 sold. How’s it feel?
Mike: Oh it’s great, it’s great. When I started, I was always very positive about the fact that I could create an auction site go up against eBay. On [various gaming forums], everyone thought it was great idea but at the same time thought that it would never work. I tapped into the forums pretty heavily and it went over pretty well. People started signing up and the snowball started rolling and here we are eight months later with over 1,200 members. We’re signing up about 150 people a month average with about 193 in October and it kinda fluctuates.
Initially my goal was 2,500 people the first year. I’d be happy with 2,000…getting 1,000 is what web sites typically shoot for in a year, y’know that don’t have a big budget to push it. I think it’s real encouraging that everybody’s getting involved with it.
VGT: I was just amazed when it first opened up and then when I just recently popped on and holy cow…
Mike: Y’know, as I said on the [Coin Op Live] show, you start with nothing, and people were like “How are you going to get anybody to sell on this? If there’s nothing there, how do you even start?” So it was basically comping a lot of people in to free accounts, just doing whatever I could to populate it with sellers. And then basically if the sellers are there, the buyers will be right behind them and that’s kinda how it’s worked out.
VGT: So the forum promotions on other sites seemed to work pretty well. Care to tell us more about that?
Mike: Atari Age is one of the forums that was a proponent of ours. They pinned our thread in the forums and we’ve got a lot of Atari Age members on the site. Digital Press let us put a thread on their forums as well. We hit the forums pretty heavy. With using the forums to promote the site, it’s like walking a fine line. You don’t want to come off like a spammer but at the same time…I get spam on my forums all the time, but I get the real stuff. People trying to sell World of Warcraft money and accounts, Viagra and all that crap. I mean, my posts are kinda-somewhat spam, but it’s related to the industry and it’s something that everybody’s complaining about eBay so it’s very timely so why wouldn’t you want your members to know about this? There’s still some forums that wouldn’t let me post. The Neo Geo forums wouldn’t let me post for nothin’. Or PC-Engine FX dot com or something like that-their forum I just cannot get into. They just blasted me right out of it.
VGT: So what did it all take to create the auction site? Did you get any outside help at all or did you do this all yourself?
Mike: I didn’t create the site myself but it’s original software, it’s not Pro-Bid based or anything like that. It was actually created by a big sports card seller on eBay. He ended up getting sick of selling sports cards on eBay and started his own auction site. After a couple of years he thought “heck, why don’t I sell the software that I created for myself?” I knew of him through a couple of associates and we had the site up and running in a week.
VGT: Wow!
Mike: Yeah! Start to finish, I was actually on a camping trip when it got set up, basically working with him on the phone and getting the categories set up. Literally it was probably less than a week-went from having no web site to pretty much the finished product. It’s excellent software with a great backend and statistical package, it’s just super.
VGT: Talk about your “turn-key” situations…
Mike: Yeah, yeah, no kidding. It was unbelievable.
VGT: Besides the technical aspects, what was it like on the business side? Was it pretty difficult, easy? Any roadblocks?
Mike: Not really. I was a big eBay user and I just kinda got sick of the fees and all of the ads and all the new formats they were pushing down my throat all the time. I just thought that the industry could support a dedicated auction site. I looked at eBay and figured they do about 300,000 video gaming auctions a day. So I thought, “Well, geez, that’s unbelievable. Even if we did 1% of that, y’know, it’d be a success.”
So it just seemed to me that there was just no way, especially for the costs that I was able to start [the site] and the speed at which to get this going, there was just no way it could fail. And I’m not depending on it-I’ve got a real job that pays me well. So I have the time to grow it and do the site justice.
VGT: So the site is pretty much self-sustaining?
Mike: Yeah. It is at this point. Actually I’ve sold 30 or 40 of the $50 seller memberships, which basically paid all the startup costs so it’s currently operating free and clear.
VGT: Looking through the Chuckwagon’s forums, you’ve got quite a community built up in a short time. Was the forum in the original plans or was it a “hey, this would be cool” type of idea?
Mike: The forums were an afterthought. I kinda thought that it was a great idea but was fighting with myself over the moderating…I’ve never run a forum before and I just heard horror stories but it turned out. I got hooked up with Vbulletin, who does the software for my forum as well as lots of other popular forums. It was a breeze and very cheap. It was one of those things where I made the decision to do it and within a day or two it was up and I launched it three or four months after the auction site started. The auction site had grown to about 600 to 800 members at that point and then when I launched the forums I sent an email out member-wide and asked them to join the forums. It turned out to be an excellent place for our members to mingle, get to know one another and get comfortable with the people they are buying and selling with.
The forums have a lot to offer. There’s a suggestions area if there’s any comments or concerns regarding the auction site, they can let me know. I kinda prioritize these suggestions and comments into levels of importance and make changes to the web site when I can. There are also lots of great gaming discussions. Great discussions on how to promote work your auctions and promote your auctions. Everybody’s really helpful. We’ve established a founder’s forum-basically what that was…when I first introduced the forums I started to get to know some of these people that were energetic over the site and really wanting to see it progress. I sent out invitations to some members seeing if they wanted to participate in kind of a private area of the forum to discuss the site, promoting the site and what not. People who really want to see this thing continue to grow. So we’ve got 8 to 10 people in there that I consult with on a daily basis and we’re always kicking around new ideas to promote and grow the site and LOTS of other things in there.
So the forums were a tremendous idea. Turns out they’re not that hard to police but lately I’ve been knocking about 30 spammers a day, so I kinda feel like we hit the big time, sort of. Judging by the number of spammers now from when it started, we must be out there someplace ‘cause they’re finding us.
VGT: Going on a different slant. We’ve talked about the positives but have you had any problems with any individuals or sales?
Mike: Um, no…I think we have one negative on the site and that’s it. The really cool thing about dealing with a content-specific site like a video game dedicated site is that in this stage of our growth pretty much everyone that’s on there is a collector or a gamer themselves. We’re not dealing with people’s parents selling things…that type of thing. Everybody’s cordial, nobody’s gouging anybody on shipping costs-everybody’s very fair and not overcharging for those types of things, which of course on eBay is kind of a problem.
VGT: Yeah, I know those. Those $1 Buy-It-Now but with $10 shipping and handling...
Mike: Yeah, yeah, stuff like that. Stuff like that will get you flagged and kicked off the Chuckwagon. We take it pretty seriously and we want to run it as clean as we can and keep the negatives to a minimum when at all possible. We’ve added an arbitration setup where before leaving negative feedback for anybody, what we’re trying to get people to do is enter the forum area and talk it out with me being in the middle. Basically trying to make sure everybody gets what the want out of the deal and to head the negatives off at the pass if possible. So far only we’ve only had that one negative out of the thousands of transactions that happen on the site, so that’s pretty good.
VGT: With the site being so young, you have to wonder if somebody would try going to try to abuse the system or try to shaft somebody but only one, that’s pretty good. So that pretty much answers my next question about problem resolution.
Mike: We set it up in the forums as a kind of a test thing. Actually we haven’t had to use it yet, nobody’s even entered it yet so I guess that’s a good thing. But it’s there if people remember that it’s there, they can use it.
VGT: Kinda hope you don’t have to use it or go into something more “black and white” with your own set of policies and such.
Mike: Well, we’ve had a couple of instances where we’ve had a slow payer and the seller would contact me and I’ll email the buyer and say “look, it’s been a week, the seller hasn’t heard from you, what’s going on?” And usually, BOOM, that takes care of it. If they don’t respond to an email, I’ll call them, which I think I’ve done once or twice and had a really good conversation with them and there’s usually been a good excuse for them not being able to do something. And they take care of it and it’s a done deal.
You get a lot of personal touch with the Chuckwagon that you’re not going to get on eBay. I’ve called people and they can’t believe I’m calling them.
VGT: Lately I’ve been on-and-off the site and recently I’ve noticed that there have been some expansions to the Chuckwagon. I’m seeing comic books, movies, music and…vintage calculators?! When did you decide to put those in?
Mike: When we started, it was video games only and that’s really always been the focus. But we’ve had a lot of people who were into video games were also into music, movies and vintage toys and collecting other things, me included. Soon after we launched, we’ve had people say “gosh, I don’t want to use eBay for anything. I buy a lot of action figures or sell a lot of action figures, can you add a category for that?” I fought with it at first then I was like “Y’know, that’s fine. We’ll add a few off-shoot categories as long as they were gamer-related” as lot of gamers collect other things. I figure I’m sort of an average collector, I kinda dabble in a few different things that are pretty common, you know, anything from the past that I grew up with. It’s probably going to be maxed out-I can’t think of anything else I could add. I may adjust the categories in the future but for the most part that’s going to be about it.
VGT: Speaking of competition, what’s the feedback from people who switched from the ‘Bay?
Mike: Oh, it’s been great. We’ve had some pretty high volume sellers drop eBay. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you look at it, a lot of them are waiting until January to go hogwild on the Chuckwagon. It’s because fourth quarter is a big holiday season and they don’t want to switch half-way into it, but we’ve got six to eight sellers that routinely have somewhere around two-to-five thousands things on eBay.
It’s kind of an issue, you know, I mean I’ve got a lot of small-volume sellers and then all of a sudden we have someone come in and put 5,000 things up so how is that going to affect the low volume sellers? Those are all things that I’ve thought about but I can’t really deny those people access to the site at the same time. No matter how you look at it, we’re a smaller situation than eBay so if you’re a seller no matter what size you are, you have a much better chance of having your item seen on the Chuckwagon than on eBay, no matter how you boil it down.
We’ve had a lot of sellers, in fact we’ve got a link on our forums to persuade people to join the Chuckwagon. Basically those are some success stories that lots of our users, who pretty much left eBay “cold turkey”, have gone on and compared their sales on the Chuckwagon over a period of time versus their sales on eBay for a period of time along with the costs involved with it. There are some really positive things to read there. It’s pretty much a no-brainer I think, if you’re selling video games, to get into place where you don’t have to pay any listing fees and the selling fees are a lot cheaper. It just makes a whole lot of sense.
VGT: Do you get a lot of referrals from these people? Or do you really know at all if you do?
Mike: Y’know, I don’t know. Not as much as you might think. I know I would ask some of the high volume sellers, when I’ve talked with them. I’ve called them, I’ve actually gone onto eBay and e-mailed them right through eBay’s system, in a matter of fact, which a lot of people laugh at and think that’s pretty funny. But I’ll go right into eBay and send them an email and they’ll usually get back to me and we’ll get out of eBay and use our own addresses. A lot of times I’ll talk to them on the phone and explain to them what we’ve got going. I had asked them if they kept track of their sales on eBay and if they have a customer list from over the years and most of them didn’t, so I don’t know.
I know some of our sellers will still run auctions on eBay occasionally but they’ll put a link to their Chuckwagon auctions in the description of their eBay auction to bring people in that way. So far eBay hasn’t frowned upon that. I’m sure we’re so small that they don’t even care.
VGT: On the Coin-Op Live interview, the host asked, now I can’t remember-was it a question on what was the largest thing you’ve ever sold or what was the rarest…
Mike: Most expensive item? Actually the most expensive item has changed I think since then, but I think it was an “arranged” auction. The seller put up a prototype Atari, I think it was called a 2700, maybe? The guy put it up for like five grand and it sold in like 15 minutes. So I emailed him and asked “so what’s going on?” and he said “Well, it was already a done deal but we just made it formal by listing it on the Chuckwagon.” So I don’t know if you can really count that one.
VGT: Is that probably the rarest item you’ve seen?
Mike: That was probably one of the rarest items we’ve had. But we’ve had a lot of things. We’re seeing a lot of the rare and hard-to-find items are selling great on the Chuckwagon. Maybe even better than on eBay. If you’ve got something that’s rare and hard-to-find, it doesn’t really matter where you list it, people are going to look for it, find it, bid on and buy it. When we started it was hard to tell new sellers, y’know, “just trust us on this.” I’ve seen people that have had really rare items and I’ve asked them “hey, come over to the Chuckwagon and I’ll let you list it for free.” That would end up bringing a bunch of buyers in. So that’s one of the things we’ve done to help grow the site. We’ve had a lot of “Chase the Chuckwagon” boxed games go for $300 to $500, some pretty rare arcade games sell for a couple thousand.
VGT: What other advantages does the Chuckwagon provide that’s not as obvious as lower fees or a strong community?
Mike: One of the advantages of Chase the Chuckwagon is the ability to list reproduction items. EBay really frowns upon that but as long as the people indicate that it’s a reproduction or a home brew or what-not properly, we’re letting them fly right now. We’ve just sold tons of that stuff. We’ve got people on Atari Age listing exclusive games that they’ll make that you can only buy on Chase the Chuckwagon and they’ll even put our logo on the label. Very professionally done cartridges; these Atari Age people are just crazy.
VGT: The future: what do you foresee for the Chuckwagon? Any new directions you’re kinda dabbling in?
Mike: One of the new things we started was the radio station [Retro Arcade Radio]. I’m not sure if that was in your bag of tricks to ask…
VGT: Actually, no, but I did notice on the forums a mention of Retro Arcade Radio and I have listened to it at work from time to time. Did you just take control of the station or were you always running it?
Mike: The radio station’s an interesting story. I met Peter Hirschberg, who started Retro Arcade Radio about four years ago. It was part of his personal website as he’s a big arcade collector and he also did a lot of the computer graphics in the movie Chasing Ghosts. He’s pretty well known in the arcade side. I had met him at the Los Angeles Film Festival for Chasing Ghosts and I told him “Gosh, I listen to your radio station, blah blah blah…” so I kind of met him then and we stayed in touch over the last couple of years. I noticed recently that he dropped the radio station from his website so I called him and said “Hey Peter, what’s going on? I can’t find the link to your station.” He said “Yeah, well I’m really torn. I want to keep it going but I don’t want to keep paying for it.” Then I said, “I’ve got this great idea. I’ve got this auction site and I’d love to provide some background music while people shop.” And he thought it was a great idea and I ended up getting all of his content that’s he’s put together over the few years for free and I took over the site and the costs. I also had a similar situation with the guy who runs Good Deal Games and he used to have a radio station [WGDG] that he wasn’t devoting any time to and not doing it justice. And he called me, I think, after hearing my station and said “Mike, I’ve got all this content that goes back ten years and I’d like to see if you’d like to take it.” So it all just fell in my lap. They sent me discs with all the original content and we’ve added a lot of new content since I took over and combined it with the G.D.G. stuff…so now Retro Arcade Radio is alive and well on ChaseTheChuckwagon.com! Although it doesn’t make any money, it’s just a neat thing to have to promote the site.
But for the future, yeah I don’t know. I mean, we’re growing and I’m always looking at the bigger picture. I’ve assembled a team of independent advertising sales reps to help sell advertising on the site. I’m fortunate where I live, in southern California, I got a friend that started Spectrum Holobyte back in the ‘80s and he’s got a friend who’s been in the video gaming P.R. business for twenty years. He was head of P.R. for Disney then head of P.R. for Interplay and he’s just right down the street. We put together a proposal where, as soon as I pull the trigger on it..of course it’s going to cost me like a grand a month which I was hoping my advertising sales would start kicking in here to kinda off set that. It would pretty much guarantee us getting written up in all the mainstream magazines, y’know EGM, Game Informer and all of those.
I’m also always doing press releases so if you Google “Chase the Chuckwagon” you’ll see the press releases. We had one go out today. It’s a non stop and never ending; 5-10 at night I’m marketing this thing, doing what I can to essentially bring more buyers to make all my sellers happy and to keep the snowball growing. That’s the name of the game.
And, one more new development, at the request of many of our members I am launching a second auction site for everything else. This new site is called Vendoogle.com and will be launched this December (2008).
VGT: In the Coin Op TV interview, a viewer named Video Master TV asked about your ChasingTheChuckwagon dot com and I was wondering if you were going to continue “scouring the southern California swap meets and offer up the gaming goodness”?
Mike: You know what, I would love to, but there’s a couple of issues with that. One, Retro Gaming Radio has been somewhat slow getting new shows out [due to time constraints at work and in life]. I was riding its coat tails there.
Another reason I had to stop [supporting ChasingTheChuckwagon] was in the early days of the auction site I had to put a lot of the stuff from the swap meets onto the ChaseTheChuckwagon as I was at first the main source of the auctions. Every weekend I’d hit the swap meets, buy tons of stuff and throw them onto the auction block. I’ve continued to do that but I’d like to maybe do Chasing every other month or maybe once a quarter and offer up two or three times the items I did before. So I think it’s going to appear again.
VGT: I thought Chasing was pretty neat, offering up a lot of awesome finds at prices you hardly see, like Pac-Man glasses for like $2…
Mike: Yeah, we were selling a lot of great stuff I remember. Like an NES Challenge of the Dragon for $5 and it’s a $150 game. It’ll be back.
VGT: I see on your site you do a podcast called “Auction Talk”. Could you describe what it’s all about?
Mike: “Auction Talk” is a weekly podcast which updates all of our members on current growth statistics, gaming contests that are happening on the site and such. It also alerts anybody to anything new/interesting/exciting that was recently listed. So it’s kind of like a mini ChasingTheChuckwagon. It is hooked up with iTunes but you can also grab it off our home page as well.
I’d like to thank Mike for taking time out of his schedule for this interview. Be sure to visit http://www.chasethechuckwagon.com to check out the many great auctions that are listed.