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Games Entertainment

Biggest Console System Collection on eBay 289

Posted by Zonk from the not-the-omegathon-but-close dept.
Cire writes "Someone named 'Mr. Soundtrack' is selling over 1300 games in one ebay auction. Included are more than 300 systems and a massive arsenal of gaming peripherals. The lot contains 23 Atari 2600s, 78 Nintendo NES's, 33 PlayStations, 60 SNES's, as well as some harder-to-find systems like the Bally Retrocade System, a Sega Nomad, and a couple 3DO systems."
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Biggest Console System Collection on eBay More

Biggest Console System Collection on eBay

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  • More like Mr. Moron (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:11PM (#10464079)
    What we have here is someone who appears to have spent most of his lifetime earnings on what is now electronic junk. P.T. Barnum winks from the grave. Another sucker, another sucker...

  • And (Score:5, Funny)

    by GiveMeLinux ( 713432 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:11PM (#10464080)
    It all "fell off" the back of a truck.

  • Now if only... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dudemm ( 810718 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:11PM (#10464087)
    We could all find a way to post our ebay auctions on the front page of /.

    • Re:Now if only... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by miltimj ( 605927 )
      I agree this is advertising, but I still certainly find it worthy of posting on /. Very cool auction -- Geek Quotient is high on this one.

  • That's quite a number... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WarpFlyght ( 586558 ) <[warpflyght] [at] [telltales.net]> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:11PM (#10464089) Homepage
    And a few days after the auction is won, who wants to bet that 1300 hard-to-find ROMs for obscure game systems are going to appear on popular emulation sites?
    • I'll take that bet.

      I know that if I shelled out big bucks for a giant game collection, the furthest thing from my mind would be to give them out to everyone for free. I guess I'm selfish like that.
      • 1st- most of those abandonware [wikipedia.org] games have probably already been ripped to ROMimage and emulated (so they haven't been lost to history because of IP hoarding).

        2nd- yeah, I guess you are selfish like that, but fortunately many aren't. You think the chicks will see you lording your *exclusive* pile of cartridges over the bit-poor, and recognize you as a success for the awesome POWER you can leverage with said stash, and then they'll scream to have your baby? :)

        --

    • I'll take that bet too. If you look closely, there's less than ten actual games being bundled in with the deal. It's all game systems and accessories.

  • Hmm a la carte would have been more profitable (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PrvtBurrito ( 557287 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:12PM (#10464096)
    Selling them individually or in smaller lots, I bet will be more profitable. BUT, getting it listed on slashdot may just pull it out in the end.
  • too many items [auctionwatch.com] . i feel one heck of a shipping cost.

    although it may be cheaper to drive there and pick up yourself, if you live not too far from NC.

    well, i wouldn't worry about that, should be only a fraction of the bid, currently at $5100

    • Re:shipping? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by KilobyteKnight ( 91023 )
      well, i wouldn't worry about that, should be only a fraction of the bid, currently at $5100


      Only took 20 minutes to go up another $623.68. That sort of thing usually only happens in the last minute or two. The Slashdot effect may have an entirely new result in this case.

      Anyone wanna make a guess as to the final selling price?

      I guess $10,001.03.

  • Jesus Christ. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tuxedo Jack ( 648130 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:12PM (#10464099) Homepage
    Really, you'd think that a collection like this could be dissected, then placed into one giant cabinet for people to play with.

    However, it's interesting that he's selling all these at once. What the heck, though, is someone going to do with 78 NES decks? Play Zelda on 78 different TVs?

  • ohh my (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Brigadier ( 12956 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:12PM (#10464103)


    I dont know about you but if I had 5g's I would buy all that stuff just to relive my child hood. Thats all the stuff I grew up drooling over and never got. I woudl be the envy of all my friends. I'm being serious when I say this.

    • Re:ohh my (Score:2, Insightful)

      by texas ( 43689 )
      Don't. Really. My friends and I bought a bunch of Sega Genesis games and a system a while back. It brought back good memories, and was fun for a few hours. But it was barely worth the $25 we spent on everything (if you figure entertaining 3 people for a few hours would cost at least that doing something else, like going to the movies).
    • That's what I thought when I bought an Atari 2600 a while ago. I played Combat, gunfight, that D&D game, and a few others a bit and realized that while they were great at the time, they are way too primitive to enjoy 25 years later ...
  • All that stuff for $5k looks like a good deal to me if you were into the stuff.

    Not as bad as this moron [ebay.com] expecting $12,000US for an early mac...

    • That's not an "early mac", it's the FIRST mac. It's not just a random 386 that you can pick up at a yard sale.

      A true collector would easily pay $12k if that's the real thing. Who wouldn't want a piece of personal computer history?
    • He's a bigger moron than you think. He paid 30K US for it.
    • Apple I computers typically sell for more than $12k. It's not "an early Mac", it's an Apple I.
    • Early mac? That's an Apple 1 system! You know, the precursor to the Apple 2 systems sold at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto. I'm not surprised someone would value it so high; they were hand-made by Jobs and Wozniak so there aren't many of them in existance... and less that work.

      And no, I'm not an Apple zealot, but this really is an interesting item for auction if you ask me.
    • A Fry's Electronics in Silicon Valley has one of those Apple Is on display. I don't think it's for sale though.
    • Let's see. An early Mac would be a Mac+ or even a MacSE, but definitely an all-in-one. You could call a Lisa an early Mac, but it's a Lisa. This is an Apple I. Not even vaguely related to a Mac, other than it came from the same company.

      This is the first production model that Apple sold, and those were hand-assembled in Woz' garage. The "moron" is likely to get more than his asking price -- these are not only pieces of history, they're legitimate museum pieces.

      Who's the moron -- the one who owns a piece of
    • that's an apple 1, not a mac. duh.
    • As others have pointed out, this is an Apple I and not a Mac. Fine, mod me Redundant. Either that, or mod me Anal, er, Attentive to Detail.

      I'm more curious to know who endorsed the check in order to cash it. Was it Jobs or Woz? Details, people. I find it odd that the seller neglected to included this tasty bit of information.

      SiO2

    • Re:Not as bad as this guy (Score:4, Insightful)

      by soft_guy ( 534437 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @05:31PM (#10464940)
      It's an Apple I, not a Mac. The Apple I was not mass produced - they were created in Steve Job's parents garage pretty much by hand. And yes, it's worth more than $12,000 (assuming it is the real thing).

      The Mac, on the other hand, was always mass produced and was created after Apple was already a successful and publicly traded company.

  • Parallel Gaming (Score:5, Funny)

    by Iamthewalrus ( 688963 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:12PM (#10464114) Homepage
    78 Nintendo NES

    Sweet! I can finally play all my copies of Duck Hunt simultaneously!

  • This just screams......... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ARRRLovin ( 807926 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:13PM (#10464117)
    "I used to own a used video game store, but recently we went out of business because we sold all of our good games."

    • Re:This just screams......... (Score:5, Funny)

      by captfi ( 560548 ) * on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:43PM (#10464440) Journal
      This just screams..... "It's the toys or the pussy! u pick."

    • Re:This just screams......... (Score:5, Funny)

      by dave_mcmillen ( 250780 ) * on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:52PM (#10464534)
      "I used to own a used video game store, but recently we went out of business because we sold all of our good games."

      Hmm, that would make sense. I love this comment in his auction listing: "... game systems aren't my specialty..."

      Aren't his specialty?! Sweet tap-dancing Buddha, this is supposed to be just a minor sideline? What's his real interest? Does he have four hundred thousand RC cars out back, or what?
      • He's probably some reseller that got this lot by mistake somewhere. Or it "fell off of the back of the truck".

        Still, it seems like a professional reseller would break up the lots and sell them individually for a lot more money.
    • Nah, I know a guy who has about half that many games and systems (including lots of imports and rare systems), and he never owned a game store, though he did work at one once. It doesn't take that much money to do, it's just that most people don't have the interest or time to track down so many games, especially imports.

  • Such Irresposibility (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:13PM (#10464118)
    When will /. editors learn not to directly link to sites in the articals? With so many ways to mirror pages available, why must they do this? Just because of one man's neglect, some startup called 'eBay' is going to have to deal with a dead server...

  • This is Bigger (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Microlith ( 54737 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:13PM (#10464121)
    Check this out [ebay.com].

    Huge auctions like these are futile, rarely would anyone ever put up that much money all at once for a gigantic collection.

    Parting these things out into sets would probably work better (and hell, I'd go after a few if I could.)

    • Re:This is Bigger (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dynamo ( 6127 )
      Uh, it may be a longer list, but it's almost all games, and the guy set the reserve price at $70,000. I don't think there will be a bid there, thus, no transaction, thus no one is gonna care.

      • Re:This is Bigger (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ProtoCat ( 452381 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @05:26PM (#10464891) Homepage
        I've been a hardware and software collector for as a hobby for a long time. That original link is just some putz who is liquidating their store assetts. I've seen someone collect over 1,500 Mario Bros/Duck Hunt carts.

        This guy we have here.. He knows what to collect and does it good. The odds and ends section alone are just are all rare and obscure, as if casually dismissed (Gee, only the rarest titles for some platforms very few have heard about outside of Japan -- and the only rare game for the Game.com!). It really would take a lifetime to get this sort of collection and it almost pains me to see such a beautiful assortment like this go up on eBay.

        I think $70,00 is a fair price. I have trouble assessing the worth of some of it just due to how ungodly difficult it is to obtain, even if the price isn't that considerable.

        To give you an example? Galactic Policewoman Legend Sapphire for PC Engine? Only about 300 copies of that game exist. Then the autographed games... Including a Nocturne in the Moonlight. Christ.

        I'm far more impressed by this guy than the Slashvertisement in the article. I really hope this guy finds his collection a good home.
    • If you're not interested in parting out your large collection for a potentially higher return, then perhaps someone ELSE is. Perhaps your intended audience is 'owners of retro-gaming stores' or 'resellers.'

      It takes a larger investment on your part (time) to part out a large collection of nearly anything. Time is something the seller might not have; and the buyer might have in spades.

    • Re:This is Bigger (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:58PM (#10466512) Homepage
      Huge auctions like these are futile, rarely would anyone ever put up that much money all at once for a gigantic collection.

      They're only futile if you have an absurd starting bid like $70,000. If you start the bid at something reasonable, you'll sell it no problem. People who set high start prices don't understand ebay. It doesn't matter if that "ULTIMATE JAPANCENTRIC VIDEO GAME COLLECTION" is worth the $70K; no one is going to START their bid at that. People shop ebay mostly just for the chance getting a deal. Say, for example, that you're selling an item you know is worth about $50. Do you start it at $50? No, because no one will bid on it! You need to suck them into it by starting it at $1. Yes, ONE DOLLAR. If it really is worth $50, someone will bid on it in hopes of getting it for LESS than $50. Then, all it takes is ONE MORE PERSON to bid against them. What's even better is that people get caught up in the excitement and will usually bid MORE than it's worth just so they'll WIN. That same item that wouldn't have sold at a start of $50 will often go for $60 or more.

      Now, with a huge collection that you think is worth $70K, starting it at $1 isn't going to work because the pool of potential buyers that can pony up that kind of dough is too small. Oversized collections like that ought to be broken into at least a dozen smaller auctions; get 'em under $10K value. The real sweet spot is probably $3K or so, but the stuff has to be actually appear to be WORTH that. I doubt the "ULTIMATE JAPANCENTRIC VIDEO GAME COLLECTION" is going to bring in $70K; maybe if he sold in blocks of less than 20 games at a time, but all at once? I doubt it.

  • Please (Score:5, Informative)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:14PM (#10464129) Journal
    3DO and Nomad "hard to find"? A 3DO will run you no more than 50 bucks (you're getting ripped off at 50 too), and Nomad's are all over the place.

    A few weeks ago another dude had a collection of truly rare stuff, like Hi-Saturns, PC-FX's, tons of different "special edition" consoles, 1000s of games, and a dev kit for pretty much every console there is.

    • Re:Please (Score:5, Informative)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:22PM (#10464239) Journal
      Hell, this guy has a lot of stuff, but nothing remotely rare.
      He's definately not a collector. No NeoGeo, no Pippin, no Playdia, no PCFX, no SuperGrafx -- Hell, no TurboGrafx! No colecovision, Odyssey II..

      What kind of a "console collection" without TurboGrafx, ColecoVision, Atari 7200..

      All mainstream consoles and games. Like another poster said, this screams "my video game store went out of business".

      So is the guy a friend of "Zonk", or did he pay to have his eBay auction advertised on slashdot?
  • How many video game stores did you knock off for these, eh? Beat up any little kids for consoles lately?

    What a hell of a collection....

    -thewldisntenuff

  • It looks like (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Enrico Pulatzo ( 536675 )
    someone's used game store went under.

    This auction is for those who want to give it their shot.

  • museum (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AssProphet ( 757870 ) * on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:17PM (#10464174) Homepage Journal
    Does anyone know if museums are archiving any of these pecies of our geek history?

  • Hell hath no fury (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrWinkey ( 454317 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:18PM (#10464177) Homepage
    like a woman's scorn for Sega."

    I would bet it's a small trade a game type shop or well....his wife/gf wants him to get a real job?

  • Gamestop (Score:5, Funny)

    by Iscariot_ ( 166362 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:18PM (#10464191)
    He's probably doing this because Gamestop offered him $50 for it all :)
  • Mr. Soundtrack got married last week.
  • This guy must be an EB veteren or something, getting "5-finger" discounts for the past 20 years. Who the hell acquires 78 NES's?
  • I believe the summary is incorrect. He is not selling over 1300 games, it looks like there are only a few games he is selling over 1300 *items*, mostly consoles and controllers and such.
  • I saw this 15 hours ago and I thought "oh that'd make a good article on slashdot" then I realised it would go for triple it's $3,000 price tag so I figured I'd let the person win it first before slashdotting it. But no, now it's going to go up a very large amount. I bet it was someone who was only willing to pay $2,000 for it that slashdotted it.

    You evil, evil people.
  • "Honey! When are you going to get rid of that old junk in the garage?!?! All it does is collect dust."

    And the guy comes back with a nice paypal receipt from Ebay. So if you are like this poor man, having your marriage ruined by excessive video games, Ebay is the solution!

    Think of it, it's cheaper than a family lawyer and you can do it all from your computer at home.

    Amazing ...

  • He had no choice (Score:5, Funny)

    by revery ( 456516 ) * <<ten.2cac> <ta> <selrahc>> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @04:25PM (#10464268) Homepage
    His parent's bought a new house with a smaller basement...

    --

    Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
    or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
  • I wonder if this is the guy that won the Omega Collection [penny-arcade.com]...
  • and in 3 hours and 58 mins *Mrs.* Soundtrack will let go of this guy's short ones.

  • Someone will win it for ~$6000 (currently with 4 hours to go) and then pay that again for shipping... 21 boxes at an average of 69 lbs each?!?!
  • This guy doesn't have the one I wanted as a kid: the NEC Turbo Express [vidgame.net]. It was, to my knowledge, the first color handheld, and used the exact same games as the TurboGrafx 16. The system never really caught on big, but it was WAY ahead of its time.

    I never did buy one. It cost about $300 IIRC, and when you're a kid with a paper route, that might as well be a million.
    • I remember that. A friend of mine has parents that were seperating, so he got both. I remember thinking that THIS was the way to do a handheld system - you could buy one game and have it work in two systems.

      Kid Courage in Alpha Zones, IIRC.

  • Maybe... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Sir Osis ( 777958 )
    ... he read the /. article yesterday about videogames being addictive, and is now selling everything to pay for rehab.
  • You know, I really wouldn't mind it as much if they did what Fark did and listed how much someone paid for the slashvertisement on the front page.

  • Can I get my auctions posted on slashdot?
  • If your store is going out of business and you want to make some quick cash on your all-but-lost inventory, bundle it all up and sell it on eBay! The millions of hits via the Slashdot effect are guaranteed to land quite a few suckers willing to pay thousands of dollars!

    Selling your trash can add cash to your stash!
  • I have an Atari 7800, Sega Master System, Sega CD/Genesis/32X, NES, SNES, Game Boy, and Game Gear.

    And a Tandy CoCo2 and 3.
  • It would be a little odd if the system has LAUNCHED as the Retrocade. Although if anyone wanted to sell a version of it today - that would certainly be an appropriate name.
  • ...as well as some harder-to-find systems like the Bally Retrocade System...

    Wasn't the Bally system called ASTROcade? It's retro now, but at the time it was made I believe it was rather contemporary.

    I'll have to have a look anyways. Any Colecovision/ADAM stuff in there? That system ROCKED! It was much easier to program than the Atari 2600 too since it had lots of video RAM and sprites, good sound etc...AND it had a real BIOS that had service routines for everything right down to playing background mus

  • If they are actually his (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BillsPetMonkey ( 654200 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @05:02PM (#10464641)
    then why did he have to test them? He would know already whether each of them works.

    It's often said that ebay is a clearing house for stolen goods. 290 machines he claims he's "built up over the years"?

    They'll sell like hotcakes precisely because they are erm, hot.
  • I see no turbo graphix do you?????

    LAME collection...not worth 2 cents without a TG16......
  • Hell, skip that .75 "featured listing" crap on EBay and get posted to Slashdot for free! This guy has 338,000 views of his auction!

    Obligatory:
    1. Hold massive console auction
    2. Post to Slashdot
    3. ???
    4. Profit!

  • Mess [mess.org] It's Mame plus all the consoles you'd ever care to emulate, all in one.

    Now all you have to do is find your ROMs that you, ummm, misplaced, online, as a torrent file.
    Joseph Elwell.
  • and i'll bid :)

    what was that movie... it was made by nintendo in the late 80's... had some "rainman" type kid who kicked ass at all the video games... pretty amusingly (stupid).

  • For cripe's sake.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sparcnut ( 775902 )
    look at his hit counter! 350K+ views... now I know why slashdotting is so effective.

  • This could mean something BIG.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @05:36PM (#10465012) Journal
    Could we all club together, buy them and hand them over to some geek from around here please.

    If they were all linked together, we could then stop forever trying to imagine a Beowulf Cluster of 2600s, Nintendos, Playstations etc.

    --we could go SEE them!!

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