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Guess what game sold for US$1,535?

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - on 1 Sep 2015, 10:27am

Guess what game sold for US$1,535?

 Yep. No joke. Once considered the worst game of all time, one of the E.T. cartridges unearthed at the Alamagordo landfill was sold for US$1,353.

Late last year, we posted a news story about a documentary that chronicled the digging up of the Alamagordo landfill. According to scuttlebutt, the landfill in the town was supposed to have been the burial site of thousands of unsold E.T. cartridges, a game so bad that it was one of the factors that contributed to the 1980s video game industry crash.

The rumors of the game being buried in Alamagordo proved to be true, as the documentary proved. Although probably not in the thousands like the rumors suggested, there were substantial copies of the game that were dug up from the landfill. Other games from the era were also found, though not in the quantity of the E.T. cartridges. Most of the games dug up were subsequently put up for sale on Ebay.

Now, almost a year later, we finally get to see how much profit the sales generated. It turns out the booty was split among all the parties involved with the town getting the most of the share. When the dust settled, everything that was put up for sale netted US$107,930.15. US$65,037.78 will go to the town, US$16,259.44 will go to the Tularosa Basin Historical Society with the rest being used to cover expenses.

As for the cartridges dug up, there are 297 now left in the care of Operational Consultant Joe Lewandowski, who oversaw the excavation. According to Lewandoski, "The film company got 100 games, 23 went to museums and we had 881 that we actually sold. They were sold in 45 states and 14 countries." Interestingly, three of those games sold were to collectors in Singapore.

So what was the highest bid of all the games sold on ebay? US$1,353 for an E.T. cartridge.

Considering that the game was about US$30 (US$75 in today's currency) when it was sold in 1982, the game sold for 1704% more than it originally did 33 years later.

Not bad for a game that was so universally panned that it was buried in a desert landfill.

Source: Alamagordo News
Via: Engadget

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