I struck out today at the thrifts so I hit a few game stores. Glad I did.
At Half Price Books I found:
Gekioh Shooting King (PS1): $5.99 (complete in great shape). Kind of an uncommon SHMUP.
Bionic Commado (360): $2.00 (I know this got mediocre reviews but for the price I figured it was worth a shot)
That wasn't the interesting find. I went to a local game store that usually overprices most things but I can usually find a couple of solid items. After looking around, I grabbed only two items:
Double Switch (Sega CD): $2.99 (complete with mint case, only reason I grabbed it, Sega CD cases this nice are rare. Even had the styrofoam).
Star Wars Episode I Battle for Naboo (N64): $4.99 (last N64 Star Wars game I needed)
When I got up to the counter though, with tax the guy said just over $5.00. I was confused but he pointed out a sign saying they were running 40% off of EVERYTHING. I was pretty shocked, this is the kind of place that won't mark anything down. The bad news? They were clearly pretty picked over. Guy said they had sold out of PS4s in the couple of days this has been running. Most of their Wii U games were gone. Still, they had a few games I had actually had my eye on here that hadn't sold, but the prices were too high. So I went back and grabbed:
Thunder Force III (Genesis): Marked $20.99, $12.59 with discount (a bit beat up... but great price for this and I already have 2 and Lightening Force, just a loose copy)
Uncharted Waters New Horizons (Genesis): Marked $18.99, $11.39 with discount (big sticker right over the end label, pretty mediocre shape even beyond that. I had passed on it before despite the original price not being bad. With the discount though, hard to pass this up, even loose)
Saga Frontier II (PS1): Marked $15.99, $9.59 with discount (just the disc with a printed cover, reason I had passed on this multiple times. Almost passed even with the discount, but there aren't a lot of PS1 RPGs I still need and this was one of them so...)
Pretty darn happy with that.