A couple of days ago, my husband packed up our Atari, threw the game cartridges in a milk crate and took the system to his brother's house. I gotta admit, I was kind of glad to see it go at first – it wasn't hooked up, the only game I ever played on it was Ladybug (which I totally ROCK at, BTW) and it was taking up space in our basement. But then I read an article about a guy who sold a really rare Atari game on eBay and walked away about thirty thousand dollars richer, and I found myself wondering if, instead of playing the lottery, we should be taking a closer look at our collection of unwanted and unused video games before giving them away.The story goes like this: Tanner Sandlin saw a story online about eight of the rarest (and most expensive) video games out there. One of them, Air Raid for the Atari 2600, rang a bell in Tanner's head. He went home, found it in his garage and put it on eBay, only to have it sell for $31,600 – the second highest amount paid for a video game to date.
The game came in its original packaging, making it the only known complete copy of Air Raid in the world.
The funny part? According to Tanner, Air Raid wasn't even a good game. As a kid he tried to trade it for other, better games, but he could never get rid of it.
And to think, he paid like, ten bucks for it as a kid in the 80s. Pretty nice return on that one, eh?
Now get off your asses and go root through those boxes of old video games in your garage. Because even the shittiest games might be worth something someday!
[source] [photo]
