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Tech

Why a Devout Game Collector Is Selling $164K Worth of Retro Games

Assembling the collection took less time than I would’ve thought.
​All images: Aaron N.

Aaron lives in Wyoming, has four kids under the age of four, and is selling a $164,000 video game collection on eBay.

"I'm currently in the process of moving," he told me. "Because of that, everything I own gaming wise has been packed away. I figured because everything is boxed up anyways, plus I'll have future house expenses, then why not put it all up on eBay and see what happens?"

Like many a man in his early 30s, Aaron said the arrival of children has beckoned the sale of childhood things. "It's hard to admit to myself, but after the kids are in bed and the house is clean, I often don't have much energy left for retro gaming," he told me. "I do occasionally find some time here in there, and I hope to pass on a love for the classic games to my kids. It just may be better if it was on a smaller scale."

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Unlike most men in his early 30s, Aaron doesn't just have a collection of video games, he has complete sets—libraries—of all the games sold in North America for systems dating back to Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 (in many colors!), Gamecube, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Sega Master System, Sega 32x, Sega Game Gear, "and many others. He has a perfect 948, purple-star rating on eBay, so you gotta trust him.

And for price, I guess you'll have to trust him too. The last gigantic lot of video games we found at Motherboard was the Guinness World Record-certified biggest in the world and it ended up fetching $750,250 on Game Gavel. Aaron's collection isn't as big, but it does have complete libraries of games, and a bunch of systems and ephemera, including the best Nintendo lampshades that this reporter has ever seen. In Aaron's estimation, the time spent collecting everything raises the value.

Not to take anything away from the selling price, but I was actually surprised at how little time it took Aaron to grow the collection—a Nintendo fan since his 80s childhood, he's only been collecting games in earnest for five years, as compared to more than 20 years that it took to build the world's largest.

Granted, for one huge lump sum you could have the same collection, but Aaron describes how he hunted games in garage sales, thrift stores, and pawn shops as well as online. It's clear he's not an "original packaging, never played" collector.

"Collecting the games really should only be a small part of it," he said. "The games themselves need to be experienced to fully appreciate what you own. Good or bad they all tell or a story of when they were produced, the popular culture of the time—the artwork and music pumped out of gaming machines with limited technology, game developers working with constraints to make something amazing. Maybe it's nostalgia driven but to me it's always been thrilling to dust off and power up a classic video game."

I get that, but like Aaron, I don't have an entire room to devote to to that thrill. On the other hand, the shelves are included in this lot, so take that into consideration, when deciding on how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you're going to bid.