Rare Video Game Collection Sells for $1.2 Million

A French gamer is now a millionaire after auctioning off his vast collection of video games on eBay. The collection includes 22 full sets from every Nintendo and Sega console ever made, adding up to about 7,000 games. Among them is one of the two remaining copies of Nintendo’s rare Virtual Boy video game. The entire collection sold for $1,229,899.99 (plus $1,229.90 for shipping).

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The seller was identified by the Los Angeles Times as 32-year-old known only as Andre from the south of France. He made it his goal to collect games from every Sega, Nintendo and NEC system and has been compiling this collection for 15 years. “You’ll probably see this once in a lifetime,” Andre wrote on his eBay listing. He also included pictures of all the games and noted that they are all in the best condition possible.

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As rare as it is, is the collection really worth $1.2 million? “This sale is a barometer for the huge impact that video games have on our culture,” Jon-Paul C. Dyson, director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, tells THR. Dyson compared the value of video games to that of old baseball cards and comic books. “People who grew up playing video games honor older titles just as other people honor older forms of art, whether that’s music or movies or other forms of popular culture.”

Now Andre -- whose eBay name is collectors_king -- is waiting for his payment, but if it doesn’t work out there is still quite a market for his rare collection. “I’ll probably list [it] again on eBay, or on Japanese auction [sites], but maybe I’ll split it by selling each [full set] separately,” he told the Times. Andre also revealed that this was only part of his entire collection and that he has thousands more he is keeping for himself.