Like everyone, you dreamed of amassing the world’s largest collection of video games as a child. Then, tracking down all of those games turned out to be too much work (and money), so you gave up on your dream. Now that you’re an adult and fabulously wealthy, you can pay someone who’s done all that hard work for you—unless becoming fabulously wealthy turned out to be too much work, too.
Crap. It did, didn’t it? Well, that’s going to present a bit of a problem, because Michael Thomasson, who didn’t give up on his dreams, is auctioning off his collection of over 11,000 games, and bidding is already up to $50,000 from just $1 on Wednesday. Hey, maybe you’ll get lucky, and he’ll accept payment in all those coins and rings you’ve spent your life collecting? (But don’t count on it.)
So, even though Thomasson has already done all the leg-work for you, you’re still probably out of luck, and it looks like he might be the one who ends up fabulously wealthy. This isn’t even the first time he’s sold off part of his collection for extra income, either. According to Ars Technica, he paid for his wedding by selling full sets of  TurboGrafx-16 and Sega Master System games—that’s love, people.
This time, though, he needs the money for “immediate family and extended family that have needs that need to be addressed,” so the money will be put to good use. Don’t worry about Thomasson’s passion for collecting, though. Long-time gamers are accustomed to frustratingly starting things over from scratch, and he intends to do just that.
If you want to know what your $50,000 dollars (and probably more) will get you, the collection includes:
Approximately a quarter of the collection is NEW FACTORY SEALED! There are a whopping 2600+ factory shrink-wrapped titles in the collection! Over 8,300 are complete with box and manual.
The following categories are COMPLETE U.S. sets, and may also include import titles, as well: 3DO, Action Max, AGP X-System, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari Jaguar, Atari Jaguar CD, Atari Lynx, Buzztime, Captain Power, Game Boy Advance e-Reader, Neo-Geo Pocket Color, Nintendo Virtual Boy, NUON, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, Tapwave Zodiac, Tiger Game.Com, Turbo-Grafx-16 CD and Turbo-Grafx-16 Super CD.
The following categories are NEAR COMPLETE U.S. sets, and may also include import titles, as well: Bally Videocade, CougarBoy, Fairchild VES Channel F, Game Wave, Gizmondo, Halcyon Interactive, LaserActive, Magnavox Odyssey2, NEC PC-FX, N*Gage, Sega 32-X, SuperVision, Vectrex and XaviX.
And then there’s an even larger list of the systems that play the remaining games. Personally, you’d have to wrest my collection of games from my cold, dead fingers. Then again, I might feel differently if my collection was so incredible that someone might actually do that.
- You can add a Mortal Kombat X preorder to your game collection
- But does he have a copy of E.T. that was exhumed from the New Mexico desert?
- How about a brand new, aluminum NES that costs $500?
