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Old Computer Game Covers - Collectible, Or Just Nostalgia?
zentechno writes "While cleaning out some very old boxes in a long-untouched closet, I discovered my first supply of PC games, some of which came out when 386s were new. While there's almost zero use for these, I still think the cover art is quite cool. I found the original Zork, its sequels, Enchanter, and Sorcerer from InfoCom, Star Trek: 'The Kobayashi Alternative' from Simon & Schuster, Pool of Radiance and Eye of the Beholder from SSI, Loom by Lucas Games, Nuclear War from New World, Annals of Rome and FireZone from PSS, Sidewinder from EA, and Defender of the Crown from Mindscape, to name many. I loved these games, and wonder if there's any sort of serious collector's market out there as exists for vinyl album art — or is it just a personal thing?"
I know I'll always hang on to my copies of Star Control II and Think Quick! from when I was a wee PC gamer. What's still rattling around in your closet?
I've still got my original C64 Ogre box. Complete with rulebook, backstory, and even the radiation badge. Although the radiation dots have long since maxed out.
They just don't go out of their way to add cool stuff to games like this today, AFAIK. Like an actual working radiation detector.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Just a quick search on ebay shows that there's not a lot of interest. Don't know if you'd have luck at a comic con or something similar. While I agree that they're cool, I think that's mostly from a fond-memory kind of thing and not something that could be turned into something financially tangible. That and my wife would kill me if I offered to buy them ... ;)
Bark less. Wag more.
The funny thing about the old computer game box art was that it seemed that the worse the game's graphics the more vivid, detailed, and colorful the box art. Look at Akalabeth or Seven Cities of Gold.
You didn't say in what condition they're in. Mint/Near-mint? Good, Fair? Anyway, to give you an idea, a brand-new (presumably M/NM) copy of Masterpieces of Infocom can cost up to almost $300. I'm not sure how much the boxes alone would cost though. Would be nice if the original manuals, collectibles, floppies were included. (Floppies might still work.) Compilations like Ultimate Might and Magic, Ultima Collection (I have them) fetch $30-60. I don't plan on selling the boxes. Ah, the good old days.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's personal. At least for now. You'll have to wait until your grandchildren are in college to even be anywhere near that kind of value.
As a previous post says, it's how rare it is that counts. Basically, if you can still easily buy these games right now (and you can on Ebay for instance, with boxes intact even) then there will be little to no intrinsic value to these items.
I have a computer game box collection from my Commodore 64 days. Go back in time 10 or so years - a website called lemon64.com was just starting up and they were putting box covers online. Turned out I owned some rarities and alternate versions of boxes they already had scans of, so I scanned what I had and my scans are still in use there (see http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemon64.com/games/details.php%3FID%3D2309%26coverID%3D1370 - that box is sitting on my bookshelf right now).
I consider my boxes to be interesting and nostalgic. Even if they aren't worth any money, I consider them to be important cultural artifacts - after all, was not my entire generation the first to be raised with video games? Most of the games has been preserved through emulation, but the boxes aren't so easily replicated.
As someone who runs a software collector's mailing list and a co-author of a collectible software grading scale, I think I'm qualified to report: It depends. The collectible value of software is pretty much the same as any other collectible:
The reason rarity != value is because, if nobody knows about it, nobody wants it. I own a fairly nice copy of Wibarm, and I believe I'm the only one left in the USA to own it. But since nobody has heard about it, and it's not part of some Infocom/Sierra/Lucasarts legacy, nobody would offer me more than $20 for it.
Condition is obviously important. Incomplete items are worth nearly nothing, and even if it's complete it should be in decent condition (ie. the box isn't crushed). If it's in mint condition (still shrinkwrapped), you are holding gold.
One exception to this is diskettes: For reasons I don't quite agree with, most collectors feel that the condition of the diskette media is not nearly as important as the other materials, mainly because most of the software has been cracked and available. I disagree, because without working originals, you can never be sure if the cracked versions are complete (and in my experience easily 15% of them are not).
The ebay market for collectible software started to dry up around 2005, but for a very long time it was a hotbed of collectible software buying and selling. You can still find some reasonable bargains (ie. an average of $20-$30 a title) but most of the time it still costs $200 for a Kilrathi Saga, or $1600 for an original Infocom Starcross Saucer.