Chase The Chuck Wagon an online auction site for video games

Q.  First off, can you give me some background information about  
yourself, who you are, where you are from, hobbies, that sort of  thing?

I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and discovered video gaming in the 1970’s.  
I’ve grown up with Video Gaming and have had everything from the early pong 
systems to the PS3 & Wii and everything in-between.  In the 90’s, I started 
getting the collecting bug when I soon discovered I wanted to have all the 
other video gaming things I never had as a child.  I used online auction sites, 
like many of us, to help find and bring back much of what my parents throughout 
over the years.  Now I have a modest collection of classic and modern systems 
and their games, classic computers, as well as a small home arcade where 
I have about a dozen full size classic arcade games and pinball machines.  
In addition to gaming my wife and I enjoy sailing the Southern California Coast 
and traveling around the Southwest in our Airstream.  

Q. What motivated you to start ChaseTheChuckwagon.com?

ChaseTheChuckwagon.com was launched about a year ago on March 24th, 
2008.  At that time I had been a pretty consistent buyer and seller on Ebay 
since 1997.  It started to become apparent to me that Ebay was losing the 
vision of what made them successful in the first place.  That coupled with the 
fact there were 300,000 video gaming auctions hosted there each day, I felt 
the video gaming market could support its own dedicated auction site.  So 
that is what I set out to create.  I basically took the best of the auction format 
so successfully pioneered by Ebay, concentrated it on classic and modern 
video games and reduced the costs to sell by eliminating listing fees and 
significantly lowering the selling/final value fees.  This was a perfect 
combination, in my book. I basically created a site that I would want to be a 
part of. Simple as that.  

Q. What is your vision for ChaseTheChuckwagon.com? Future plans and 
goals? Where do you see ChaseTheChuckwagon.com 5 years from now?

 
My goal is a lofty one.  That is to turn ChaseTheChuckwagon.com into the #1 
on-line buying & selling destination for Video Games.  I want every single person 
in the world who is looking to buy or sell video games to think of 
ChaseTheChuckwagon.com first and foremost.  Since we are fast approaching 
our 1-year anniversary on March 24th, 2009 I can only imagine where we will be 
in five years.  I guess, the best answer is, that unlike a few other video gaming 
dedicated auction sites that have tried and failed over the course of their start-up, 
we will still be around in five years.  That much I can guarantee!  I have designed 
the Chuckwagon to be a very economical site to operate.  And, I am very fortunate 
to have a “real” job to help support me during this initial start-up and growth 
phase.    

Q. There is an interesting story behind the name of Chase The Chuck  Wagon, 
care to give us some detailed background information?

It’s funny, when I launched the site, it was brought up more than once in the 
many gaming forums, that our name was stupid.  Many asked, “What does 
this even have to do with gaming”.  Well the answer is our name does have 
its roots in video gaming.  In fact, Chase The Chuckwagon was the name of 
a rare Atari 2600 game, which was a part of a Ralston Purina Dog food Ad 
Campaign back in the early 1980’s.  Basically, if a consumer purchased a 
certain amount of their dog food, cut and mailed in the UPS seals, they were 
sent this game cartridge.  The game was actually made and programmed 
by Spectravision and was probably one of the worst games for the Atari 2600 
(yes, even worse than Pac Man).  Then in the 1990’s when people started to 
collect these older video games, it was discovered that not many of these 
games actually made it out into consumer’s hands, and thus was extremely 
rare and became the first “holy grail” of video game collecting.  In doing so 
it also coined the term, “Chasing The Chuckwagon” as in chasing that 
one rare item to be the holy grail of your video game collection.  So it seemed 
to be a fitting name for a video gaming auction site; a site where one goes 
to find rare, lost treasures and “holy grails” to be the cornerstones of their 
collections.  I was lucky that the URL was available and actually ended up 
owning both URL’s ChaseTheChuckwagon.com and 
ChasingTheChuckwagon.com.

Q. In closing, what else would you like people to know about 
ChaseTheChuckwagon.com?
 

The first thing, most importantly, I want everyone to know that it’s not only 
an auction site, but a video gaming community first and foremost.  To exemplify 
and instill this community feel I introduced a community member forum so that 
all our members can congregate in one place and get to know one another.  
We have a fast growing, yet safe venue not only for buying and selling video 
games, but also for communicating with and getting to know other gamers and 
collectors from around the World.  There really is no better place on-line to buy 
and sell video games than on ChaseTheChuckwagon.com. 

As always, I encourage people to not take my word for anything. Try out 
ChaseTheChuckWagon for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Please 
keep all comments relevant to the main point of the article.