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The Ultimate Video Game Library up for Auction
Nerds writes "There's an auction on eBay for a console game library that goes back to about 1986. The seller has included all of the boxes and manuals for over 13 systems and a few hundred games. Everything from the NES to the Virtual Boy to the Dreamcast is represented, along with several systems I'd never heard of. Current bid: $15,000. " Its got tons of normal stuff (NES, SNES, SMS, Genesis etc) and a phenomonal number of games. Even a 3DO (when I was a kid, god I wanted one of those things... course now it doesn't even hold up). I hope you get a little jolt of warm memories when you read it too.
I haven't checked out the auction, but my primary fear is whether this auction is legitimate.
Assuming it is, this is the kind of stuff that belongs in a real museam. I'd hope that whoever wins will set up some sort of public display. That way everyone can enjoy it.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
ME: yo, you should put a picture up on that auction, lots of people on slashdot think you are a fraud :-(
Baybuy1: nope not at all
Baybuy1: and ill only sell if my reserves met
ME: but why no picture?
Baybuy1: if not real how would i know names of all those games??
Baybuy1: no scanner or dig camera
ME: why are you selling?
Baybuy1: just want to need money
So what do we learn from this? Apparently there aren't any sites with lists of tons of old games out there. And he really wants to need money???
I suggested going to kinko's to use a scanner, he said he wouldn't be able to before it ended... 4 days, no kinko's hmmmm
tony
Hate to say this but the guy's seller rating is zero, there is a good chance he's not legit. Besides this is a heck of a lot of stuff all said to be in mint condition, or so he claims.
I'd be wary...
How old are you anyway, CmdrTaco? As I recall the 3DO came out in 1994...
I guess i really missed out, eh?
He is probaly needs the money to buy a PS2!
A few other posters here mentioned they have seen collections that dwarf that one. I'm one of those people with such a collection. Alibet the focus of mine has been mostly pre-NES games. In fact, I have a few pictures of my "core" collection up on my web space.
.sig
collection closet 1
collection closet 2
collection closet 3
A rough inventory, not counting the consles themselves:
Atari 2600: 475+ different games, 1000+ "extra" (duplicate) cartridges
Atari 5200: 60+ released games. 100+ extras
Atari 7800: Everything ever Released (60+ titles), shrinkwrapped, times 3. 150+ extras
Colecovision: ~100 different titles, 300 extras
Intellivsion: ~85 different titles, 100 extras
APF M-1000/Imagination Machine: 10 of 12, released,5 extras
Fairchild Channel F: 23 of 26 released, 20 extras
Vectrex: 15 games, Multicart
Emerson Arcadia: 10 games
RCA Studio II: 8 games, 6 extras
Magnavox Odyssey: 5 complete games, 20 circuit boards
Magnavox Odyssey 2: all 50 US released titles, complete, 150+ extras
Phillips Videopac: 66 of 70 releases, Complete Chess and MS Basic modules, 30 extras.
and some more recent items:
Sega Master System + 40 games
NEC Turbographics 16 & Turboexpress + 20 games
Sega Game gear + 20 games
Sega Genesis + 80 games
JVC X'eye + 15 CD games
Atari Jaguar: All cart & CD releases through '99, complete.
and I am sure I forgot something there.
Oddly enough: not a single Nintendo until the N64.
In some ways, collecting for these systems is harder as I wasn't able to uses places like Funcoland and Blockbuster to get the collections going. Instead I've picked them up from flea markets, garage sales, and lots of trades and ebay.
What gets interesting about collecting pre-NES games is the distribution curve. The first 70% of the released games catalog isn't too hard to come by.. Then it starts getting progressivly harder and hard to find the more rare items. For example, Most Atari 2600 games can be had for a few dollars, but recently a boxed complete "Chase the Chuckwagon" went for over $1,000 on eBay. For collectors like myself, things slow down after a while as items you don't have don't come available very often, and when they do, you are bidding against other collectors in the same boat.
The ones that are the rarest are usually the ones that (a) sucked and didn't sell well, or (b) were released late, near the video game crash of 1983.
And that doesn't even begin to take into account unreleased and prototype games. For example, I own two unreleased Atari 7800 games: KLAX and (NTSC) Sentinel. A total of 9 and 8 copies respectively are known to exist. In 5 years only 1 of the 17 has been known to change hands.
After the NES era, companies like Nintendo and Sega exerted much more control over the manufacture and distribution of games for their consoles, and as a result you have fewer unbelievably rare released games like 'Chase the Chuckwagon' and 'Quadrun'. The few unlicensed NES games such as the color dreams stuff and tengen tetris are there though and command the rare premium.
For me it has been more fun colelcting pre-NES games because the industry was so new and didn't have the rules that it has now.
Finally, There are days I am tempted to turn my back on my collections and sell it all off. I can't help but wonder what sort of adventure that would be, and just wast sort of price it would fetch.
.sig? I don't need no stinkin'