Every month we trawl eBay’s completed listings to find stuff of interest that has sold for vast sums. Why? Nobody knows the answer to that, man.
Even though Christmas was only a month ago, somebody still managed to find $2,425 (£1,516) to bag a complete set of American Dreamcast games. For their cash they got all 254 releases, 44 of which were still sealed. That works out to about £6 a game… which isn’t bad at all.
Sticking with Sega, a brand new Master System 2 sold for £349.95 on a Buy It Now auction – which is over four times its original value – while a Ryo Hazuki figure went for $203.50 (£127.26) after 22 bids. I think that’s proof, if any more is needed, that there are plenty of Shenmue fans out there.
That Dreamcast collection sold for a mere pittance compared to the colossal $22,800 (£14,258) that a sealed copy of the infamously rare Family Fitness Stadium on NES ended at. Only 200 copies are thought to have been released back in 1987 due to a mass recall. Last year a copy sold for $41,000, which is thought to be the highest price a videogame has ever sold for.
I bet many people regret giving away their Nintendo Game & Watch handhelds as many of these are worth a small fortune now. One particularly desirable model is catchily named YM-901 which was only available as a prize in Japan. One of these sold for £500 with just a single bid while a boxed Snoopy Game & Watch also sold for $400 (£250) attracting 32 bidders.
After sifting through the 20 pages of high-value PlayStation listings I finally found something that wasn’t a PlayStation 3 bundle – a sealed copy of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance that sold for £99. A copy of the Cave shooter Ibara sold for £90 while one lucky seller got $125 (£78.18) for a factory sealed copy of Mortal Kombat 4 on PSone. I bet that looks nice on the new owner’s shelf.
THQ recently announced that they have the rights to He-Man: Masters of the Universe but I doubt that’s why a sealed copy of The Power of He-Man on Atari 2600 sold for $61.01 (£38.15). A sealed copy of Rayman on Atari Jaguar sold at €56.01 (£47.58) and somebody got their claws into Hyper Force on Jaguar at a cost of €52 (£44.18).
Getting out of the realms of retro, a rather attractive limited edition Red Dead Redemption Xbox 360 went for £2,000. This IGN competition prize was custom painted by Rockstar and had a certificate to prove it. Nobody wanted a yellow Simpsons Movie Xbox 360 for £800 though. Apparently there are only 100 of these around, so that’s a little surprising.
Might as well have a laugh while we’re here – somebody wanted $10,000 for a copy of Kane & Lynch 2 on PlayStation 3. Joke is on them, really, seeing they’ll have to pay eBay for that listing. Derp!