Atari Video Game Sold for $31K

Atari Video Game Sold for $31K
Thursday, 15 Apr 2010, 10:37 PM CDT

(AUSTIN)- Tanner Sandlin bought the game "Air Raid" for the Atari 2600, back in 1984 for about ten bucks. After decades of being packed away, it just sold for $31,600. It is so rare, that only 12 other are known to exist.

"I think nostalgia is kicking in, Sandlin. This is 30-35 years old. I think people are starting to remember back when they were kids and first started playing with their friends and everything. I think that's why people wanted to buy this."

Sandlin said he recently read an online article listing the most rare video games, and he realized he had one of them. He remembers when he purchased it as a kid.

"I was at Tuesday morning with my mom one day. And I found it sitting on a table with discount toys. It couldn't have been more than 10 dollars or something," Sandlin said.

Sandlin says it was one of his least favorite games. None of his friends liked it either. At one point, he even considered it worthless, until recently when he put it up on EBay.

"I went up to about $10,000 pretty quickly, and about 15 to 20 seconds before it was over it went to $16,000 and I'm like, okay, that's good. And the last 15 seconds people starting dropping bids right and left, it hit that $31,000 in like the last second."

"$31,000 is a lot of money, I don't think most people are gonna find $31,000 dollars sitting in their closet," Justin Buchman, manager of Game Fellas Video Games, said.

The folks at Game Fellas in North Austin do say collecting video games is becoming more popular and profitable.

"We're also a great place to bring stuff, anything collecting dust at home, go thru your closets, bring it in. See if you have anything that's worth anything," Buchman said.

"I was stunned. I couldn't say anything. Anyone in Austin if they listened closely, they could probably hear my wife screaming!" Sandlin said.

It is a transaction the Sandlin's will never forget. As for the Air Raid game and its rare box, they're going to the highest

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Atari
• Video
• Game
• Sold
• for
• $31K

[FGSRFunLol]

Dudes wife is SMOKIN'.

[dak1474]

Tell me about it all I got is a world series autograph ball but its from the mets. JK

[thebeerwolf]

If there is a market ( = people willing to pay that for an old game) then there will be prices like that.

People do not care for older consoles like Fairchild F, Oddysey 1 & 2 and a huge etc. Just because they lack the magic of the Atari 2600, but they deserve the same care for be historical pieces of videogaming.