Tag Archives: Ebay
Idiotic Ebay auction of the week
You may remember the story I told in class about buying an Amiga computer and the salesperson asking if I wanted to add a $500, 25 Megabyte hard drive. I of course said I could never fill up a 25 Megabyte hard drive.
Originally released in the mid-’80s, The Commodore Amiga was a great computer, at the time a graphical and system powerhouse, far outshining other machines of the time. It was used to make graphics for the NFL, for television shows and advertisements, and the editor used to do all that was known as the Video Toaster. The Toaster won an Emmy for it’s design, and it was developed by Brad Carvey, brother of Dana Carvey, who used his brother as the inspiration for his character Garth Algar in the Wayne’s World skits and movies.
Of course, there was also Dungeon Master.
Buried Atari cartridges up for sale on Ebay
Back in 1983, Atari paid Steven Spielberg around $25 million for the rights to make a game based on his film E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. They gave programmer Howard Scott Warshaw six weeks in which to finish the game in order to meet the holiday season, even though most games took about six months to develop. So confident were they in the demand for the game, they actually manufactured more game cartridges than there were consoles to play it on.
The demand was indeed strong. Unfortunately, the game itself wasn’t so strong, in fact some say it’s the worst game ever made (I disagree), and it’s especially strange considering his other titles – Yar’s Revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark – are considered some of the best. Either way, the returns started coming fast and furious. Before they knew it, Atari had a massive amount of unsold cartridges and the urban legend was born that in the middle of the night, they trucked all those E.T. cartridges off to a landfill in the New Mexico desert, and didn’t just bury them but buried them under concrete. That couldn’t stop the game from heralding the great video-game industry crash of 1983.
Recently, a documentary produced by Xbox studios was filmed that followed investigators as they set out to dig up that landfill and determine once and for all whether or not the cartridges were actually there. It turns out they were, which I think we all knew, along with copies of Phoenix, Swordquest, Defender, Star Raiders, Centipede, and Warlords. I was lucky enough to attend a screening of the documentary hosted by Howard Scott Warshaw at the recent Classic Gaming Expo here in Las Vegas, and it was fascinating. Here’s the preview for the documentary, and maybe it’s just me but I found the preview itself as interesting as the whole movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIaWAyHIqok
Some of the cartridges that were unearthed have already gone up on eBay, which surprises absolutely no one, but the prices might. Many of the games have some good bids, but the E.T. boxes that came out of the landfill are going for over $500! That’s a picture of one below.
Atari 2600 E.T. game from Almagordo landfill
I’m a collector of this stuff myself as you know, but I just don’t feel motivated to bid on these. We already saw the post on eBay lunacy, and while I understand these are a part of history – and they are – these prices are high, in my humble yet nonetheless correct opinion. I’m tempted, but not at those prices.
Ebay Lunacy
After the retro-ish post yesterday, I was inspired to see what was available on Ebay from the days of computing’s past. I was instantly reminded why I rarely buy vintage computer stuff on Ebay.
I used to, and once in the bluest of blue moons still do, but I would like to draw your attention to a few auctions that exemplify why I pulled away from it long ago.
It used to be that you could find fun vintage tech stuff on Ebay: Osborne luggables, IBM Convertibles, Northstars, all sorts of great stuff could be rummaged up.
Not any more.
I found one auction, the first one below, that so absurd in its price it spawned this whole post, but I decided to dig deeper and see what else was priced so ridiculously that my eyes would widen even further in disbelief. I arranged the auctions by price from highest to lowest, and I wasn’t disappointed. Actually, I was supremely disappointed.
