I've done it again. I went into a charity shop on my way home from work the other day and got myself one of these:

And one of these:

Cost to me: ten pounds each.

The Master System is boxed with three games, one controller and RF cable. No power supply, but it uses the same PSU as the Mega Drive, so there's no problem. It's very clean, the console itself is practically mint and it loads cartridges first time with no wiggling or threatening behaviour required. Which is a bonus. I didn't really need a Master System since I went out of my way to get a Power Base Converter for the Mega Drive, but it's always nice to have the real hardware. I would have really liked a Model I Master System, those things are just so... angular... but I'll settle for this this since it's in such nice condition.

The Dreamcast is also in very nice condition, unboxed with two controllers, one VMU, power cable and RF cable (what? no AV?) but no games. Turns out the RF cable was borked anyway, so I ordered a third-party AV/S-video cable off Amazon that night and it turned up this morning. I'm happy to report that everything seems to be fully operational at this point, at least until I can get a couple of games to test with. It seems like the previous owner had quite a DC collection, I went through the VMU memory and it was full to bursting. I had a look at his saves - quite the Crazy Taxi fan, it seems. And is that a Half-Life save game I spy? Interesting...

Anyway, just wanted to report that I'm now officially and completely accidentally a Sega collector. Can't really hide it any more. Just the Saturn to go... or maybe a SG-1000/3000?