Collection of 6,850 video games and 330 consoles up for sale on Ebay for $550K | Hacker News Reader

Collection of 6,850 video games and 330 consoles up for sale on Ebay for $550K

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51 pointsmikek38 comments

This makes me wonder: How will today's games be preserved in a collection like this?

I'm sure the DRM servers for games like Assassin's Creed won't be maintained for more than another decade, if that. Then, you have all kinds of PC games with limited authorizations. Most people also have numerous digital games tied to their Steam / Origin / Amazon accounts. If any of those disappear, you could lose a big chunk of your collection. There's no way to pass those games on to anyone else even if the services are still around.

It seems piracy is the only hope of preserving today's games for future generations.

Totally true, given the additional facts that a collector would pay a big amount for getting a mint piece of something he may have already, but in a bad shape. Plus, a lot of them are Japanese versions, which will appeal to those, who only have a USA version, after all, japanese voice-dubs are really world apart!

I also found some pieces that I would pay a lot to have, but then again the problem is I can't have them individually. Maybe some gaming site or community or museum can pick this up?

The speculation on reddit is that the collection isn't worth close to $50k, let alone $550k, because the real gold in the collection has long since been sold off and what remains is just a collection of old games and consoles, games and consoles that aren't rare or hard to acquire elsewhere.

Or you could just, you know, check the list.

From the pictures it looks like all the good consoles are in there, Playstations, Dreamcast, the Nintendos, Atari, plus handhelds. Then it seems there are a bunch of special edition consoles.

As for games, I keep on seeing great games in there, including recent ones and old classics. Many are obviously imported and that's fairly expensive with the current Yen/Dollar exchange rate. Here's a picture of what appears to my eyes to be nearly every Zelda game: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/713/517ie.jpg/ Every Mario game: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/441/513ku.jpg/ and OH DEAR LORD it's the "Mother" series: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/525/506p.jpg/

Let me tell you about "Mother". You have to sell your kidneys to get those games. They're some of the best games ever written and they're also some of the hardest to find.

Update: Now that I have looked at the actual list I see it contains some other incredible pieces, such as a sealed copy of Chrono Trigger (in 2008 one such copy sold for $1,217), Bubble Bobble part 2 (at least $100), Sonic the Hedgehog ($300+), Suikoden II ($140+), Virtual Lab ($900+), SD Gundam Dimension Wars ($700+), Jack Bros. ($120+), sealed Ibara ($180+), ...

Update 2: That sealed copy of Chrono Trigger is for the DS, sorry. But Virtual Lab looks legit.

These are all artificial values i.e. they are a niche and you have to find someone who wants to pay that for it.

Technically, my signed (by Bill Gates and Paul Allen) copy of "The MS-DOS Encyclopedia" was supposedly worth about £500 but it went on eBay for £25. And for that I had a nice curry.

All values are artificial. Everything is worth whatever someone is prepared to pay for it.

If someone buys this lot for $550k, it's worth $550k.

You probably could have found a buyer willing to pay £500 for your intaglio, but it's all about market reach.

This is why sniping on eBay for badly listed stuff can still earn you a small fortune. I bought a pair of mislabeled oil paintings with provenance on eBay for £45, and sold them at Sotheby's for, um, more than that.

How many zeros more?

Oil painting with provenance go to Sotheby's. Ok, thats a given.

But where would you go to find a buyer for computer manuals signed by billionaires? Or old computer games and long obsolete hardware?

I always imagined you'd have to have a specific contact in mind when you buy such things and hope to flog it to them. And to whom do you go to if you had the money and wanted niche object X?

Sotheby's, still. You'll find there are plenty of real-world auction houses who do specialist auctions and sell really esoteric stuff to a specialist audience.

Also, you can always re-sell on eBay and break up the lot.

The total value might not be that much, but I believe that the fact that they are "together", the collection as a whole should be worth around that money (efforts for collecting, etc).

I don't think it works like that. The amount my house is worth is based on the number of rooms, the location and the condition, not the accumulated effort to build it.

I believe it does, labor cost is part of the price.

So… it does work like that. The value of the collection and of your house is a combination of its raw value, as well as less tangible/quantifiable factors (location, condition) – not to mention supply/demand.

The accumulated effort of building your house – and thus the worth – is encapsulated right there in the number of rooms, location, and condition. In fact, I'd bet the human effort in building a house (planning, building, decorating) is more than the cost of bricks and mortar.

The speculation on Reddit is how much Pawn Stars or Gamestop would be willing to spend. I don't think $50k is an honest speculation, but just a lowballed arbitrary number. Someone else chimed in after looking over it and guessed $150-200k.

What's up with having so many of one console? Eg, all these PS2s? http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/607/dsc03114h.jpg/

All the different revisions?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2#Hardware_revision...

The inner child inside of me is screaming, "Bank loan, bank loan, bank loan you're an adult now the bank will gladly lend you money to relive your childhood!", but the inner and in debt mid twenty year old I really am is saying, "Keep dreaming" — a museum should buy these, $550K is probably a bargain considering the total collection could be close to a million maybe even more in a few short years.

I don't think the bank would loan an in debt mid twenty year old over half a million dollars to buy videogames.

You'd be surprised... I recently got pre-approved with my girlfriend for over that amount from the bank for a home loan and it ain't easy getting a loan in Australia compared to other countries either. I say to your sarcasm, check mate.

That is very different from a loan to buy videogames. They can take the house if you default.

You'd be surprised.

Every time I walk into the bank here in the UK, they literally beg me to take out a loan because I have no debt and a good income.

Last time I was in there, I had to get quite angry at the customer service person because she just wouldn't drop it. I did the polite "No thanks", "No, really, I'm not interested", "No THANK YOU", "Look, I'm going to start shouting in a minute, I have told you NO" and they STILL kept pushing

This is my experience too.

Whenever I enter a bank to deposit an occasional cheque they are desperate to offer personal loans, investment advice, mortgages, credit cards etc.

A polite decline is often ignored and they aggressively go for the sale.

Heck, someone could buy the lot, and turn around and sell them in pieces. You could very likely make more than a million bucks in total.

Definitely man, easily. It would be good to see these go to a serious collector or someone who will treat them right and keep them in pristine condition. A gaming museum would be the best choice.

Anyone else with their mouth agape as they scroll down the listing looking at those images? 8-0

When I checked both the versions of his full list:

Mega: running

Dropbox: Error (509) This account's public links are generating too much traffic and have been temporarily disabled!

http://i46.tinypic.com/w9jtia.png

My question is: why is he selling? lf he is wealthy enough to have accumulated all these games and consoles in the first place and not care about probably making twice as much by selling piece-by-piece, I don't think it's for the money. Maybe his SO said it's either me or the video games. The fact that he spent literally months of eight hour days lovingly cataloging and photographing everything seems to show that the flame still burns that led him to collect them in the first place.

Is it all still in the original, unopened packaging? A lot of collectors like it like that.

Personally I think it's way overpriced. The seller is factoring their own sentimentality into the price, something unlikely to be shared by others. At $50 a game and $200 a console, it's still only $408K.

But then, maybe there's a sentimental billionaire who wants it...

There's no way that Limited and Collector's editions will cost $50 in this life. I believe he may even have the last available copies of some games laying over there and sentimentality plays a great part for those ones.

Your estimate doesn't factor in the labor cost of acquiring all the disparate items. That alone is worth the difference.

You have to consider the condition and rarity of some of the games. I only skimmed the listing, but he does has quite a few gems. In recent years, prices for "retro games" have ballooned. You'll be surprised what games in a great condition go for.

Just to mention a couple of examples:

- Earthbound (SNES) has a market value of up to over $300

- Chrono Trigger (SNES) normally sells for several hundred dollars as well.

- Neo Geo AES carts are coveted by collectors.

- Progear (CPS2) is one of the most sought after PCBs in the shmup scene, still selling for hundreds of dollars.

Also, sealed games sell for quite a premium.

I do think that if he took the time to sell the items individually, he would make more money. Then again, this would also involve a quite substantial investment of time.

Feel sorry for this dude. A lifetime collecting, imagine all the time organizing and buying these things, and the cost. Unless this goes for a lot over the initial asking price, he's sort of getting a raw deal.

Sad to see a life wasted like that. But I guess he isn't the only person whose lives video games have ruined (WoW).

How do you know this ruined his life?

Who decides what is a worthy pursuit in life? Many would be envious of the amount of time he has had to spend on his passion.

Go through your old tax returns for the last 10 years (or just extrapolate or use your memory). Add up all of your total gross income for those years then ask yourself where all that money has gone.

The answer is: your life. If it was spent well, having fun, making friends, deepening relationships, making meaningful connections in life, etc. then it was worth it regardless of the cost. Money is just paper, the best use of it is in the service of creating happiness or well-being.

Well said. But I have to point out that buying experiences gives far more happiness and satisfaction than buying things. Sure he might have had great times with friends and family through those video games, but that's still a lot of stuff.

I couldn't see the Steel Battalion controller for the original Xbox.

A lot of history here. Could be worth more than a mere half a million.

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