| THE TIM ATWOOD COLLECTION Every now and then, if the moon is right
and magic is in the air, you'll find an eBay
auction from the mysterious Tim Atwood, a
controversial figure in the collecting community
to put it mildly
The unopened shipping box of
Stadium Events carts was his own, and sent NES
collectors into a rage over the potential
devaluing of their "investments"
Tim appears every now and then
with a ridiculous auction full of mountains of rare stuff. Where he gets it all, no one knows
To quote a Nintendo Age user,
"He’s my friend. I’ve known him
for 20 years. I have no idea what he’s
thinking. Ever. He’s an enigma. Not because
he wants to be, he literally just is."
eBay Price: $290,000
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SONY BVM-20F1U Supposedly the greatest CRT monitor ever
built due to its 900 lines of resolution (480 was
the limit on the typical CRT)
To
my eyes, it's not THAT much better
Craigslist Price: $1,200
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| FOUR "FAST AND THE
FURIOUS" ARCADE CABINETS The listed price is actually PER CABINET
which is way inflated even for something like
this
Though the owner is willing to
strike a deal if anyone wants to buy all four.
Don't split this family up
Craigslist Price: $4999.99
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AUTHENTIC SLOT MACHINE This real slot machine was property of
an Atlanta casino and purchased at a swap meet
On the day I snagged this
picture, this was not the only slot machine for
sale
Craigslist Price: $900
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| SUPER NES This otherwise common, ordinary-looking
SNES is being sold at over three thousand dollars
because it has a "low serial number."
Apparently that's a thing?
eBay Price: $3499.99
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CENTIPEDE ARCADE BOARD Take it home, dust it off, and start
zapping bugs
Craigslist Price: $150
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| 317 FLATTENED SUPER NES GAME
BOXES See any that
interest you?
eBay Price: $3999.99
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POKEMON RED & BLUE 1998
STORE DISPLAY The hole in
the middle is for inserting a small TV, so it can
play looped footage of the game
eBay Price: $1499.99
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| ORIGINAL APPLE 1 KIT Here are some facts about Wozniak and
Jobs' original garage business project: they
hand-made and sold about 200 Apple 1s in all. Of
those, around 80 are known to still exist. And of
those 80, only six are confirmed to still work
We're actually lucky that 80
exist, as once Woz and Jobs invented the Apple
II, they offered a trade-in for anyone who had
purchased an Apple 1. All Apple 1s traded back in
were destroyed
This picture just begs for
details, so here's the full-resolution version
Christie's Auction Price:
371,250 GBP
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PROTOTYPE NINTENDO 64 BOX This store display box, sent to
retailers months before the N64's official
release, contains many differences from the
finalized box art. The characters on the side are
all SNES-era renders, including the RPG version
of Mario
eBay Price: $499.99
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| VIRTUAL BOWLING The world's rarest Virtual Boy game,
released only in Japan
No, this wasn't localized as a
"funky" version with Nester -- that was
a completely different game. Go figure that the
VB's library is so small yet it has TWO bowling
games
eBay Price: $2,200.00
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NINTOASTER As seen on AVGN; it was a real product,
though defiinitely not an official one
Whoever made them no longer
does, so they're eBay collectors' items now
eBay Price: $220
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| "COCK AND PLUCKER"
BUFFET MENU The E3 of
2000 was a weird one, in that Nintendo was seen
openly promoting Conker's Bad Fur Day with its
own booth, decorations, and actual bar that
served beer. By the time the game was released,
Nintendo pretended it never knew the furball
This is a memento that proves
Nintendo's bar once existed
eBay Price: $56.00
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RIDICULOUSLY OVERSIZED MARIO
HAT Here's proof against
the stereotype that the Japanese like things
small. But where can you possibly find a head big
enough?
eBay Price: $89.90
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| DRAGON QUEST COSTUME Official product from Japan. Erdrick's
duds are so fancy, only the wealthy will ever be
able to dress as him
eBay Price: $865.00
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"YEAR OF LUIGI"
COMMEMORATIVE COIN If you
recall, Nintendo declared 2013 the "Year of
Luigi" and created several volumes of merch
dedicated to Mario's often neglected brother. The
reason was because they were knee-deep in the Wii
U era and needed SOMETHING to sell
A lot of this Luigi merch is on
eBay now, but none of it is as expensive as this
coin, offered exclusively at Comic-Con that year
eBay Price: $199.99
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| FATHEAD BANJO Called a "Stubbins Plush,"
it's an officially licensed product even though
it looks very bootleg
Hopefully Mumbo can change him
back
eBay Price: $44.99
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EVER 17: OUT OF INFINITY Also known as an early game from Kotaro
Uchikoshi, the man who would go on to write the
Zero Escape trilogy. This game and that trilogy
share some common themes, and some consider Ever
17 to be better. Of course, Ever 17 is also far
rarer
eBay Price: $99.99
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| KINGDOM HEARTS E3 KEYBLADE When Square showed off Kingdom Hearts at
its 2002 E3 booth, they had this gimmick where
members of the press were given Keyblade-like
keys, which they had to insert into slots to
activate video screens of clips from the game.
Ordinarily everything at E3 that isn't given away
is destroyed, but this one key survived. Wasn't
even opened, in fact
eBay Price: $1000.00 (plus free
shipping)
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XBOX 360 CALCULATOR Comes with its own Red Ring Of Death
that flashes when the calculator breaks one week
after you start using it! ....actually it's a
lanyard
eBay Price: $174.99
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| CONKER'S BAD COASTER Here's another piece of evidence for
Nintendo's bar: these are the coasters you would
have used in it. There are some stains here,
indicating this was put to its intended use
Illustration
on the back, indicative
of its "picturebook" ad campaign
eBay Price: $99.70
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ZOAR! One
thing I've noticed about vintage arcade units
being sold on Craigslist is that they are ALWAYS
in the middle of nowhere. This particular machine
(Taito, 1982) is stuck all the way in Hermiston,
179 miles east of Portland
Craigslist Price: $500
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| SOMEONE'S FORTNITE ACCOUNT This was one of several misspelled posts
I found offering a leveled up, kitted out
Fortnite account for a ridiculous amount of Juul
Pod money. Apparently it's lucrative
But very likely against Epic's
TOS
Craigslist Price: $1750.00
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STARFOX T-SHIRT If you've never seen this one before,
it's because you didn't score very high in the
1993 StarFox Weekend Competition. Contestants
were given this shirt if they scored over 70,000
points in their playthrough
eBay Price: $250.00
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| UNOPENED DONKEY KONG JR. MATH
CARTRIDGE FROM JAPAN Nobody
wanted to play it there either
eBay Price: $899.00
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THE GAME HANDLER The miraculous ONE-HANDED NES
CONTROLLER! The packaging boasts: "The first
TOTAL controller! No codes needed! No programming
required! Make guys run backwards, disappear and
more! Changes each game differently!"
Add-ons included a remote (what
for, to make it two-handed again?) a microphone,
and a bizarre "cockpit viewer" of what
purpose we aren't certain
eBay Price: $349.99
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| SUPER MARIO BROS. BRANDED
CHEAP PLASTIC MAZE GAME "Hours
of fun! No battery required!" boasts the
packaging
It's worth noting that out of
all the 80s and 90s Mario merchandise I saw on
eBay today, most of which originally sold at
stores for much more than this maze game
did....NONE commanded a higher price than this
eBay Price: $199.99
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CHRONO TRIGGER JAPANESE
TELEPHONE CARD Put Chrono
Trigger characters on something, and it's worth
money. Put them on something disposable that no
one cared about in its day, and it's worth much
more
If I owned a roll of Marle
toilet paper, I could retire
eBay Price: $234.95
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| RIDICULOUS ICARUS This is one auction that's going to live
in infamy. A sealed copy of Kid Icarus ended up
going for WAY over its typical asking price, and it's because a new type of
collector has now entered the market. They're
called "The rich dorks who want to own
Spider-Man #1 and X-Men #1 and all that other
stuff just because they can."
The problem is that by now,
they already HAVE all the rarest comic books and
cards, so they're going after video games. And
they're using the same criteria: the first
appearances of characters who have had iconic
staying power (although Pit is kind of an
outlier). Thanks to these guys, a sealed Super
Mario Bros -- a common game that isn't hard to
find in any form -- now costs a ridiculous amount
because every seller is hoping one of these
people will show up and drop a brickload of cash
for it.
Heritage Auctions Price:
$2000.00
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HALO ON XBOX On that same day, an NES TMNT sold for
$3600, an Adventure of Link went for $3360, and a
Chrono Trigger sold for $8400....but NOTHING
could top what THIS extremely common game went
for:
Heritage Auctions Price:
$9000.00
In proper context: it's an NFR
copy and it's never been opened, and there are
only a handful of Halos in the entire world that
satisfy those two conditions. But I still want to
try picking up a $2 case from a thrift store,
re-seal it and start fishing for suckers. It's
apparently this easy.
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| SUPER NINTOASTER Guess what -- they made a 16-bit
version!
All those who grew up with the
Gamecube are now asking "where's MY toaster,
huh?" Sorry, as usual, you guys get nothing
eBay Price: $215.00
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