Nerf Thrifting 101: This Is What It’s Like In New York City
Spoiler: NYC is NOT the best place to do Nerf Thrifting

Alright, look… 👀 I don’t usually go NERF THRIFTING, but I got kind of triggered watching some thrifting videos on YouTube. The thrift stores around here SUCK! I don’t know why I said “stores” when there’s only one thrift shop around here, but it absolutely sucks! And blows. At the same time! How is that even possible? I don’t know! And it stinks a little bit sometimes, too. Anyway, I continued watching these Nerf thrifting videos and the more I watched, the worse it got…

Nerf Thrifting: The Backstory

I was trying to maintain my composure, but then he kept finding more and more blasters. And for bargain basement prices, too! He found a Dart Zone Spectrum (which I still don’t have), he found a Nerf Elite Infinus (which I also don’t have) and then he found something that made me totally lose it. He found a Nerf Rival Perses for $3.99. Four dollars! Four bucks for a $70+ blaster. I have never found anything half this good when Nerf thrifting. I’m not even gonna lie, I lost full. 🤯 Here’s a snippet:

Yeah, so THAT happened. 💢 And then it almost got even worse. I started thrashing my keyboard, until some kind of hopefully intelligible words came out and… Yeah, I’ll admit it: I left a “hate” comment. I told that YouTuber to… well here, just take a look:

Okay, I’m only kidding 😝, but yeah we got to talking and he challenged me to “be persistent and just keep going back” to the thrift shops. “Just keep going Nerf thrifting.” Yadda yadda yare yare daze. I’ve heard all of that before but I decided to take him up on the challenge and so I went to the thrift store, twice! And, well, just look for yourself…

But first, on the way out of my apartment, I noticed something odd in my building lobby. Before I set out on my Nerf thrifting journey, I had to know one thing. Alright, let’s talk about something, Walmart. Why is this box so damn BIG?! (If you’ve been reading all of my recent reviews, I bet you know what’s inside…📦)

Making My Way Downtown…

Making my way downtown, walking fast. Clothing passed and I’m toy bound! I crack a smile as I enter into the thrift store. “Ah, it’s been quite a while,” I think to myself. “Here I go!” But before we begin, here’s a quick Pro Tip, free of charge.:

Whenever you go Nerf thrifting, the first step is to look for evidence of blasters.

– Blee, Bleenga.com, 2023 Colorized

You might wanna write that down. /s

Keeping in line with my own advice, I instinctively cocked my head all the way back and sniffed loudly.👃Hmm. There was a hint of non-expanding recreational foam in the stale thrift shop air. “I love the smell of Nerf foam in the morning!” I crouched down real low, I’m talking locust pose low, and looked underneath a display stand… I instantly saw one of those old X-Shot darts from before they had the “#1 Darts.” Bingo! Yeah, there’s blasters here somewhere!

Nerf Thrifting: The Blasters!

Ooh, first up, what is this? I believe it’s called the Dart Zone Magnum Superdrum. This is a cool, high capacity springer blaster with, well, a super drum. If I’m not mistaken, the Magnum Superdrum had an ammo capacity of 40 darts. Dart Zone actually sent me one of these for free back in the day when I was actually known and popular somewhat. But, whelp, you know… now I’m stuck Nerf thrifting for one.

Oh, look, there’s a Nerf Maverick! A 6 shot revolver blaster. This is the OG N-Strike sidearm. 🥹 Beautiful. The grip on there is just SO comfortable. I just always love to hold it and just get that feeling in my hands whenever I see one of these old N-Strike blasters. Super comfy grip and very fun to tinker with if you’re so inclined. This blaster was eventually succeeded by the Nerf Elite Strongarm.

Next up, I found some piston powered Nerf Super Soakers with the pump. It was called the Nerf Super Soaker Shotwave. I never really liked those that much, to be honest. I don’t really like any new age water guns made by Nerf. I like the old school CPS Super Soakers way better. Plus, the Shotwave was missing the water magazine, so yeah. it wouldn’t even work. Not the best Nerf thrifting so far, but wait… there’s more!

The next thing I found, I just thought it looked really cool and the ergo was there, too. I think it’s some kind of knockoff laser gun. Nothing worth picking up (who even plays laser tag anymore?), but still somewhat interesting. Okay, now this next blaster, I was obsessed with. The grip was pretty decent and the whole aesthetic was pretty gnarly.

It’s clearly a Bumblebee Transformers blaster, but it didn’t actually fire any darts unfortunately. After regretfully putting the Bumblebee blaster back, I stumbled upon an old Zombie Strike Flip Fury blaster. I have fond memories of this blaster, but… not enough to buy it! 🤣

Next, and as if I had to pick up every single dusty blaster that’s on the shelf whilst Nerf thrifting, I picked up the same model of laser blaster from earlier, but in a different color. Yup, that’s the same laser gun from before. I don’t know why I picked it up twice, I don’t think I realized it was the same thing.

Just then, as I was lingering in thoughts of deep regret for making such a grievous mistake, I was interrupted by an employee of the thrift shop.

Interruption Interlude

“¿Que hora es?” she asked, snapping me out of those intrusive thoughts. “Hmm?” I managed to reply. “¿Que hora es, por favor?” she asked again. “Oh, umm, it’s 11… uh 10:25.” I managed to stutter out as I struggled to read the time on my Apple Watch with the analog watch face. Yeah, I’m a digital millennial, but I like to look classy. Sometimes. Anyway, her reply shattered my fragile male ego and brought me plummeting back down to Earth. She said “¿es no Espanol?” or something like that. Ouch! Another punch to the gut. She did not speak much English, so she was hoping for an answer in Spanish. Of course!

Oh, yes! I can do this! I took Spanish back in high school! (Or was it junior high? Uh-oh.) “Oh! Uhhhh… Diez…” She let’s out a small laugh, and I let out an overly loud nervous laughter that probably made us both a little uncomfortable. “HAHAHA!” Better just move past it and answer the question. “Diez… uhh veinti-cinco?” I stammered out, hoping it was correct. “Okay, okay.” she said and I burst out into another fit of nervous laughter “HAHA!” but this time, she felt pity and returned a chuckle “gracias. jaja! sorry.” Who knew Nerf thrifting would turn into a Spanish test? lol

Back to the Blasters!

Okay, back to the actual Nerf thrifting! Yeah! When I glanced across to the shelves on the opposite side of the aisle, I immediately laid eyes on the Nerf SharpFire. When I saw the SharpFire, I didn’t even think about it. I grabbed it up and I thought “I’m buying this!” It’s just a cool looking little Nerf pistol that absolutely reminds me of the old NES Zapper that came with the original Nintendo Entertainment System. I used to have one before my big brother took it from me. That big dummy dumdum stupid idiota.

Now down below the glorious SharpFire, down on the next shelf, there was something a little less glamorous. Look at this hunk of junk here! The old Nerf Modulus BattleScout, ew. You would literally have to pay me to take this piece of crap, No cap! Though I did think of buying it for a second, just for the pump grip which I quite like, but nah. It’s not worth it. The pump grip is literally the only redeeming quality of that blaster.

Oh, what do we have here, hmm? Oh would you look at this beauty. It’s the Nerf Ultra Three, or at least that’s what I think it’s called. Was it actually the third Nerf ultra blaster? Somebody let me know, down in the comments. It’s a shotgun styled blaster with an internal magazine. Right, this thing was pretty cool and back in the day I one hundred percent would have bought this! But I don’t know, I’m trying not to hoard. I had so many blasters before, you know? It can get out of hand before you know it…

Wait a minute! As I was putting down the Nerf Ultra 3 and turning to walk away, I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. You see, my peripherals are crazy. You got to use your peripherals! Nice! It was a red Titan AS-V.1, which is actually pretty awesome! I would normally have been quite happy with this kind of Nerf thrifting discovery, but, uh, unfortunately it was not the rare red Nerf blaster that I was looking for…

Nerf Thrifting Recap

So at this point, I feel like I’m done with my little Nerf thrifting trip and I’m just going over everything that I found. Here I’ve put everything I thought was noteworthy into a little pile. That includes the Nerf SharpFire, the Nerf Ultra 3, the Titan AS-v.1, and this Bumblebee little toy gun thingama-whatchamcallit. Quite the Nerf thrifting collection if I do say so myself. Just before I call it quits, I think it’s best that I make one more sweep around the other aisle and then I’d loop back around again and be done.

Alright, so I walk around back to the other aisle. I’m walking, minding my own business, just looking once more at everything that I checked out previously. It’s not too much but it’s actually more than usual so that was pretty good. It really makes me want to go back again. So, guys, tell me… whoa whoa WHOA!

You Spin My Head Right ‘Round!

Whoa! I swear that wasn’t here just a minute ago! What the heck?!

Needless to say, I snatched it up with the quickness. “Get over here!” Oh my goodness, it’s the Roundhouse! The Nerf Rival Roundhouse. The Rival Roundhouse is one heck of a Nerf blaster. It’s around pistol size, but has a 15 round capacity. Five integrated 3-round magazines, feeding a rotating turret. It’s a Rival revolver on ‘roids. And I found one for less than 5 bucks!

That blaster was NOT there when I did a loop the first time. Then I came back again and it was there, like magic. So naturally, I decided to go back and check out everything again, this time for the third time. I walked down this little toy aisle and found a pair of Triads, which I also considered buying. I found a couple of generic old Buzz Bee blasters, but not much else. Bummer.

Yeah, I didn’t find anything else, so I just came back to my little Nerf thrifting stash, just to take a video clip of everything I did find. I also took a moment to try to talk myself out of buying anything from that pile and trust me, the old me would have bought every single blaster here. Every. Single. Blaster. And I really thought of it, too, especially this Bumblebee Blaster. In my mind, I was already planning how I would have tried to integrate an actual dart blaster in there somehow. But alas, I managed to restrain myself.

But you know what? This trip was worth everything just because I found the Roundhouse. So I was really, really happy to get this blaster. I was actually looking at it online and the price was between like 15 and 22 dollars at a few different locations. Lucky me.

Nerf Thrifting: Day Two Blasters

So this is Day 2 of Nerf Thrifting. I came back to the thrift shop again just to see if I could get lucky again. Because if you know me, you know luck is not something I’m used to. This was a few days later and instantly I found the Nerf N-Strike Spectre, with no barrel unfortunately. Everyone knows the suppressor looking barrel is the best part of the Spectre! So I put that back on the shelf and continued my quest.

I walked around the corner and there’s a Nerf N-Strike Longshot and the funny thing about this Longshot is it’s a few years old now, but it looked so fresh and clean and new. So this is really just like a mint condition Nerf Icon Series Longshot. But as you could see, it was missing one of the handles for the priming bolt. I still probably should have got that one, though. Whatever, though, “no ragrets!”

After that, I saw the MicroShot version of the Zombie Strike Crossfire Bow. It looked really cool and was pretty nostalgic. I think I actually like it better than the original. I also found some random Doomlands Series scope attachment with a dart holder built into the top of it. Was that from the Persuader? I really can’t remember. Or maybe something that came out after I was gone? I don’t know. Please leave me a comment and let me know what this piece is if you know.

So after this underwhelming Nerf thrifting day, I’m just walking around blindly wandering around the store. I do this sometimes, not because I really want to buy anything else, but because previously little kids would pick up Nerf blasters from the toy aisle and leave them all over the place.

A Blaster You Can Ride?

I’m walking down near the back of the store and then boom! I find this in the back of the store. That’s crazy! It’s the Nerf Kick Scooter! Look, I posted this to my other website Nerfgunattachments.com as a product that I was kind of interested in and then, BOOM!, I find one while Nerf thrifting. It’s just so gnarly! Although I think this kind of thing would work better on a BMX style bicycle. I think that would be really awesome but this is kind of crazy. This is unique, to say the least.

I was considering getting this for my son, maybe, but it was just so dingy and dirty and banged up that I ultimately had to pass on it.

A Special Message

If you’re reading this, I love you! Thanks for stopping by and coming along on this crazy Nerf thrifting journey that I went on and I hope you’ll tag along for the next adventure! Can’t wait to see you again!

Blasters Mentioned in this Article

Last update on 2025-06-14 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API