Cash in on vintage tech
THE gaming scene has changed so much over the years as technology and the way we interact with games improves. And while that’s great news for gamers, it also leaves you in a quandary of what to do with your old kit.
Some heartless individuals can simply sell or throw away their obsolete consoles, while others, who find it harder to part with possessions (yes, I’m a bit of a hoarder), soon find their lofts bursting at the seams with ‘retro’ gear. But those of us who obsessively hold on to our vintage technology could have the last laugh.
Old computer and game consoles can actually be worth a pretty penny, especially rarer releases.
An Amstrad CPC 464 – the first personal home computer built by Amstrad in 1984 – sells for around £220 (around £70 less than the original price if you brought one with a colour monitor back in the 80s.) A handheld copy of Donkey Kong, released as part of Nintendo’s Game & Watch multiscreen series in 1982, is worth around £200.
And if you have a pristine, boxed example of the insanely popular Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) from 1992, then you could sell it for up to £640. Even a used version could net you £160.
It’s not just hardware that collectors are hunting for. Classic games are also popular, with rare editions and unused copies selling for thousands of pounds.
You don’t have to venture that far into the past to find a game that’s worth a bob or two.
A Mario Kart 64 cartridge for the Nintendo 64, which came out in June 1997, could be worth up to £320 – if it’s complete with its original box and instructions.
On the original XBOX, a good condition copy of Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast could be worth upwards of £100. If you happen to have a factory sealed copy of Outrun for the Sega Genesis, then you could also hit ebay and expect to get around £100 for it.
If you were the lucky winner of a collector’s edition of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, when it came out on the PS3 in 2009, then you’re sitting pretty. Packaged with the game, fans who bagged a Fortune Hunter Edition also got a collectible art book, a replica of the Phurba Dagger artefact, and a case autographed by the team at Naughty Dog who developed the game.
Just 200 copies of this were given away, selling for around £6,000 at the peak of the game’s popularity in 2012. Even now you could expect to get £1,500 for it – more if you resisted the temptation to open it.
Sticking with rare games, and if you were a puzzle fan on the Gameboy, it might be worth rooting through that dusty box of cartridges in your back bedroom.
Amazing Tater – a sequel to the 1989 release, Kwirk, sees players guide a potato through several obstacles and out of the level. Sound dull? It was. And poor sales, mixed with next to no marketing meant the game had had its chips.
However, in 2012, collectors began to realise just how rare copies of this 1991 release are, and
overnight prices jumped from £10 to £100. In 2016 an unopened copy of the game sold for an eye-watering £1,200. But one of the rarest games out there is called Air Raid. It was released in 1982 for the Atari 2600 by a studio called Men-a-vision. Air Raid was the only game ever released by the company.
In 2010 a complete copy of the game sold for more than £24,000.
That sale fished out another copy in 2012, the first truly complete game (cartridge, instruction manual and box), which sold at auction for nearly £26,000.