Cheapest place to get stuff?

Hi, I hope this is the right category for this...

I'm looking to get my hands on a NES and a SNES, some controllers, all the necessary wires, and maybe if I'm lucky, a couple games.

All the online places I've looked for (ebay, amazon, kijiji, etc) want like $80 for a single console, which seems like retail prices.

I don't really care what they look like, because I'm planning on using the console boards for a modding project, but they do have to be mostly functional. One more thing I forgot, I'm in Canada, some places don't like shipping up here for some reason.

Anywho, can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

Well basically :
- Garage sales can let you get used stuff for cheap, usually arround $5, but you'll have to be lucky to find what you desire. Rare items will be, rare, but it happens people have rare video games in their garage and sell them for $5
- Ebay and co you are being ripped of but you can get exactly the item you're looking for, shipped from whatever country in a matter of a few weeks.

If you're lucky some thrift store like Value Village might have one for cheap, but that's kinda rare these days. If you watch craigslist/kajiji long enough somebody might sell one for cheaper, but again you need to be lucky there.

~$65 before shipping is about normal for an NES on eBay, I think. There's still a relatively high demand for them.

You might consider looking at a Famicom. They sometimes go for cheaper, since it's a slightly more obscure system. You may need to mod it, or find an NES RF adapter to get it to work with the TV though, which could negate the price difference.

And it sets a reasonable bound on the price of a high-quality famiclone. Have you any ideas on how many NES consoles get sold for this amount per month?

That was roughly what they were going for a year ago when I bought one. If you want to gather stats on eBay, click the "advanced" link next to the search button and check off "completed listings".

Look for stuff people throw out, or things that are mislabeled! I saw an "untested super nintendo 64" on eBay; picture of an NES and zapper. Won for $7, and in the mail came a working NES.

I promise a few minutes of cleaning and maybe a new cartridge connector, this guy will work just fine.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nintendo-NES-Co ... 3a7b981cf4

It's very difficult to actually break old video game hardware.

Doesn't look like they ship to Canada, but I'll keep looking. Thanks.

Oops, didn't take that into account. The principle stands, though - these deals pop up all the time.

EDIT: This dude has a STACK of 'em and ships worldwide. Grab a few! Often you can mix-and-match parts to build a working one out of "broken" ones then fix the remaining ones.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-NES-Co ... 5897aa4ac8

In other hilarity, whilst browsing eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cardboard-Cutou ... 35c1f043d4