go ahead and get it. Ours did a meltdown, and we tried to fix it. I remember at first the power supply went out, so we got a new one from Radio Shack. Then the pin for the first player broke that did the up signal. Well anyway it lasted a long time, but eventually broke down. It was replaced by a Nintendo NES and then later a Sega Gensis and Ninteno SNES.
I moved out, got married, and now have a Nintendo 64, and a Sega Genesis.
Rumor about old Atari stuff, is that whatever they couldn't sell got dumped near Devil's Tower (Where the "Close Encounters of the First Kind" got filmed) about 10 or 20 feet down in a hole, covered with dirt, still shrinkwrapped. Dig and dig, and maybe you can find those "ET" 2600 games they couldn't sell?