Slashdot Mirror
Huge Console Auction Debuts
neura writes "In quite possibly the largest console auction ever, someone is selling just about every development kit and production game console ever made in Japan. They also have listed tons (almost literally) of software to go along with the systems. Anybody ever seen the original Super Famicom development system? The pictures alone are worth taking a gander. :)"
Let's get this out of the way:
1) This guy is the most dedicated console collector the world has ever seen!
2) This guy is the most fucked up collector the world has ever seen!
3) Imagine a Beowulf Cluster made out of them...
4) (Obligatory MS dig for the white Xbox at the end)
5) (Obligatory all you base belong to us joke)
6) Sure, but don't they support Ogg!
7) In Soviet Russia, the consoles buy you!
8) I have an Atari 2600, you insensitive clod!
9) Let's get this out of the way
10) ???
11) Not Profit!
G-Force music visualization
When advertising, please place 'FS:' in the subject line to avoid causing offence. Thanks,
And just think... if only 3 people ever play it, it will have been the most successful 3DO game in the console's entire history!!!
HIGH BIDDER HAVE TO HELP FOR SHIPMENT & PAY ALL SHIPPING FEE, DUE TO ALL ITEMS MIGHT OVER 100KGs !!! HIGH BIDDER MAY HAVE TO PAY SOME THOUSAND US$ FOR SHIPMENT
:)
that's gonna be one hell of a shipping cost. it may be cheaper to rent a ship and go to hong kong to pick it up yourself
i guess if you are willing to pay 100k it may not be a big deal.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
The dude is selling this for $100,000 starting price. That's pretty insane. Unless you're a store wanting to resell this in a 3rd world country (even then, it'll be hard), you're not going to make your money back.
Truly this is only for the insanely obsessed console freaks.
But that's just me. Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh well.
..but I wonder how much more he would have made if he'd listed each item individually, instead of a bulk lot? It'd be a fair bit of work (not massive, since he's already got the details for most of the items), but you think it'd probably be worth it.
"..INTERNATIONAL BONK TO BANK TRANSFER.."
I wish my bank offered Bonking services - maybe I wouldn't moan about their monthly fees if they did.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
1) Buy this whole kit and kaboodle for $100K
2) Open the most bitching video game museum ever
say it with me now
3) PROFIT!!!
Seriously, I would easily pay $10 or $20 to see some of this stuff. This is probably the best chance an existing computer museum has to get a piece of console history in one fell swoop.
Of course, it's not like this guy couldn't have been so dedicated as to milk phones from a zillion different auctions and make up this whole thing as a prank.
- JoeShmoe
.
The images are coming from his own web site, which is now slashdotted.
Nice. Just a few more university japanese courses so I can read the development manuals, a couple (or 80) grand to hustle up before the auction ends, and my ultimate goal of porting Mary-Kate & Ashley: Magical Mystery Mall to every system ever made can be realized.
Imagine there'd be a geek with money. I know, that's very rare, but still... Wouldn't that said geek with money be interested to know there's another geek w/o money but with a ton of geek stuff waiting to be sold? There's your /. story.
/. for helping keeping the money in the family.
Thank you
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Don't you get the impression that the person listing the auction is not a naitive english speaker? All of the hardware is Japanese and the seller is located in Hong Kong. A few spelling errors doesn't change what you get.
As far as I know, the development kits are still Sony's property - they're understandably rather touchy about their intellectual property and would not want such a machine to fall into the hands of the general public. Specifically: I thought all development machines were still owned by Sony, you just pay for being able to use them.
I would not be suprised if he receives a visit from Sony's lawyers demanding the return of their development hardware...
That truly is a mighty console collection, although it's clear that this auction probably has better retro value, and is more affordable. Tis pity it's bigger than my house... :-(.
Hell at $100,000.00 US this is quite a bargain. ;)
I mean the Hello Kitty LE Dreamcast alone is worth it's weight in Gold. But with the N64 Pikachi-orange Limited Edition!?!?!?!?!
Ohhhhhh Man!
My experience with console development systems is that you have almost no rights to transfer/sell. Everything must be handled through Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo. I predict that, if they want to, they can confiscate all of his development systems. Maybe the rules are different in Japan, but I doubt it.
Look at his selling history and active auctions. He's been selling this stuff on eBay for over FOUR YEARS. He has about 100 seperate items on sale right now. He is probably bored as hell of it. This auction was a great idea, even if no one bids the $100,000 dollars. It has generated HUGE amounts of publicity for him(it had 20,000 hits before it hit /.) If no one bids on it, he'll have no problem selling the items seperately. And maybe, just maybe, there's a video game obsessed nut rich enough to bid the 100k.
It's pretty obvious why he's selling all of that. He must be getting married and the bride-to-be said "you can either play with SEGA, or play with me, your choice"
"Um, Dad... can I borrow $100,000?"
" WHAT?! "
"...plus shipping..."
I'm sure the seller has quite a bit of experience in this area. He is selling, amongst other things, a development version of the M2. They didn't just hand those out free with your cereal, you know. The M2 development systems were so rare that people doubted they were shipped at all. Add to that the DD development system (did those go outside of Nintendo?), and the Deramcast, Saturn, Playstation, SNK development systems, and you have a surprisingly rare bundle. Now add in the Supergraphix, the Pippin, several unopened bottles of launch wine, multiple PS2 tools (which normally e-bay for about 20k each, I might add), thousands of games, lots of rare variations of every system released in the past 15 years, and this really does deserve to cost a lot more than 100,000 dollars.
Note that the auctioneer makes classic Japanese to English blunders, like switching S for T. In Japanese pretty much all consonants are followed by a vowel, and hence "Dreamcast" is usually pronounced "Du Ri Mu Ca Su T." When dealing with a native English speaker, an inability so spell correctly is usually a sign of below-average intelligence and a general disregard for details. However, when dealing with a Japanese speaker nothing can be read into classic Japanese translation errors.
The ______ Agenda
I have come to the conclusion that if the seller were to list each item separately, he would probably double or triple his returns.
If you honestly believe this you should buy the set, split it up, and relist it.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for sega."
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Sure, once I receive the funds, I'll be sure to send you all the P-P-Playstations and X-X-X-Boxes.
Join the TWIT army now!
Sweet mother of god, he really does have a Pippin! Several of them! In fact, he probably owns every Pippin ever made, given that no one actually bought one.
The seller is listed as living in Hong Kong, says so himself, and from "Member since: Mar-17-00" (Source) I would suspect he's been there for a while. His eBay name is "lingjr", which is probably stands for Ling Junior. That's not a Japanese name. Lastly, the romanization of Dreamcast is "", or if that doesn't render, "doriimukyasuto" (Source).
I'm not trying to be a dick. I just think he isn't Japanese.
For a collection that large, I'd spend $100K any day.
So would I. That's probably why we don't have it.
The ______ Agenda
Should a civic or possibly even private organization get behind this auction and successfully acquire these items I am certain the financial and long terms benefits would be easily felt...
For instance, a Tech Museum in Seattle, Washington could do more to firmly establish such a location as the seat of such software development in at least the U.S. In addition they could charge an admission fee to recoup the cost of the acquisition and curatorial duties associated with the maintenance and operation of such a museum. The benefits could be quite multi-faceted....
Alternatively, a software magnate (quite likely MS for example), or an extremely well-funded upstart could acquire the collection for display in their corporate offices as a thorough exposition of 'everything that came before', hence making a very firm and eloquent statement about their place in the ranking of software/console manufacturers.
Of blankness, I know nothing.
Anyone in London UK can view a selection of games consoles (and, even play some of them, including classic pong) at the design museum as part of Sony's INTERACTION SPACE:
Rediscover your favourite vintage video games - from Pong and Pac-Man to Tomb Raider - by playing them in the Interaction Space on the second floor of the Design Museum. Visitors can also discover the work of the pioneering multimedia designers who are defining the images we will see on our computer and TV screens in the future in the virtual galleries of the Digital Design Museum. Or they can learn more about the designers, architects and technologies featured at the museum in Design at the Design Museum, our online research archive.
It would be fantastic if these sorts of consoles could go to a museum to support future exhibitions of this kind.
>>PAYMENT:--- ONLY ACCEPT:--- 1/ INTERNATIONAL BONK TO BANK TRANSFER--- 2/ WESTERN UNION INTERNATIONAL TRANSFER
This guy will accept his $100K the same ways kidnappers accept theirs!
No sending an intermediate party after this guy to get your $$$ back (as one could with, say, a credit card)... and somehow I doubt Hong Kong's laws would protect an American buyer if something went sour...
Your experience must be pretty narrow, then. I lived in Japan for eight years and Viet Nam for one, and everywhere, the pronunciation issues that make up what we would call a Japanese or Vietnamese accent made their way into writing, frequently even among advanced speakers such as my wife.
If you have many (or any) Japanese friends, you've probably noticed, for instance, that when faced with an "Is that word spelled with an L or an R?" choice, they will usually get it wrong. A close friend of mine has a master's degree in EE, works for a large Japanese electronics company, spends many months out of the year in the United States (in places where there aren't a lot of Japanese), speaks English extremely well, and still flubs the l/r thing all the time.
The guy's spelling level is in line with his overall grammar, and we don't know anything about his educational background. He may have learned English at a conversation school, where spelling isn't taught at all.
He may be going on nothing but what he learned in high school plus his experience since then.
I'm sure he really is a native Chinese speaker.
You're not just looking at the $100k pricetag plus S&H but also at spending quite a bit at customs (and it's going to be a b**ch to get some of this stuff cleared by customs in the first place). Oh, and be sure to tell the UPS guy not to leave the stuff on the front porch. ;)
If you used your imagination to determine what it might be like doing business in a second language you'd know:
1. translators will not keep your business interests in mind as well as you will.
2. Since it's difficult to determine where your own errors may be, it's even more difficult to spot errors made by a spellchecker. And what commonly used, unmodified spellchecker would have correct spellings for "Deramcast," Famicon, or the many other specialized words in this ad?
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
100k is indeed pretty cheap, especially considering that a lot of this gear was never available to buy and sell normally.
For example, I was under the impression that you can't buy PS2 devkits, only borrow them from Sony (and pay heavily for the privilege). I'm pretty sure you can't just sell them on...makes me wonder how he got hold of them in the first place.
My name is Wan Dev Kit, son of Wong Dev Kit, Hong Kong's foremost exporter of video game systems and utilities. Following the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong, my father disappeared and his bank account has been frozen by the state. This has caused great hardship to my family who have been unable to access his account.
However, there exists a loophole in the law which allows foreign companies to remove existing stock from Hong Kong following the takeover. To this end I am seeking a discreet, reliable foreign partner to provide the sum of $100,000 (ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS U.S.) in transfer fees which will allow my father's company to operate outside Chinese control. In return, you will be richly rewarded by the Dev Kit Electronics Company.
THank you for your cooperation in this matter.
Wan Dev Kit