I Believe in Santa Claus - Santa's House Thrift Edition

   My brother has lived in Anchorage, Alaska for over 25 year and i have never visited him. This year was the first opportunity I was able to do so.

The 4 of us packed up for 10 days and went to see him and my sister-in-law and his dog, LOKI (aptly named might i add). As we were talking one day i was explaining to him about my obsession with board games and how sometimes i find things when i thrift. He said we would go thrifiting in between other things. My wife was fine with it as long as we did not derail the main parts of the trip. I found an odd game called With Sword and Shield but i had to explain to my brother that great finds are rare and he should not get his hopes up.  

   After a couple days we found ourselves in North Pole, Alaska and we were on our way to Santa's house and i spotted a thrift store. My brother encouraged me to stop but i said "It's a small local shop, i'm not worrying about it, lets just go to Santa's house." My brother agreed but said we were stopping after that. I agreed and we went to buy several Christmas knickknacks and such and took a bunch of pictures and headed out. And i stopped at the bargain bin. I walked around and saw some warhammer books and thought that was odd. I went to the game shelf and my jaw dropped. I picked up said jaw and went to the counter and paid my $6.99. When i got outside i started jumping and fist pumping, for i my friends had found a complete copy of JATI! JATI you say? why are you so excited about this game? whell i'll tell ya.....

A candidate for publication in the 3M Bookshelf Series, but never published in quantity. It is a verysimple tile placement game. It is a 2 or 4 player game, the four player rules consisting simply in a tournament.

Only about 100 copies of this game were produced; they were all pre-production play test and reviewers' copies and most were subsequently destroyed. The first run had a 1965 copyright and a 10 X 10 playing surface; the second run has a 1966 copyright and a 9 x 10 playing surface.

That is a picture of my copy of JATI. In the thrifting community it's a running joke to say "Hay pick me up a copy of JARI if you see it." It would be like a person who collects vinyl saying "Hay while your out get me the Beatles butcher cover album". Not that kind of money but that kind of shock and awe. Alaska was the single greatest vacation of my life. We hit every major city in Alaska and i will always be grateful for the wonderful time i had with my family, but as a board game geek, this will be my crown jewel forever.