The buried E.T. treasure
At the very end of the documentary, "Atari, Game Over" it was revealed that technically, the Atari cartridges belonged to the town of Alamogordo because that is where they were buried. The game was incredibly famous and it became a fun mystery for people as to where it was buried and if it really was buried, which increased its value. In his last interview, the mayor was asked if he was glad that the game was buried there and he said yes and finally, he was asked if he would want other things, like the game, to be buried there and he laughed and he said yes. They were referring to the money value of the game and the mayor said they could sell the games on eBay so I decided to figure out how much these games were really worth.
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According to CNN, a copy of the buried Atari E.T. game is about $1, 500 but there were more copies of other games such as "Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Breakout, Star Raiders, Pele's Soccer, Centipede, Baseball, Asteroids, and Defender." In total there were 900 games found and they were able to sell them for a grand total of $100, 000. However, the E.T. game alone was $1, 535 meaning that if they found a 900 cartilage stash of just E.T. games they would've made $1, 381, 500. In 1983, the official number of games buried was 800, 000 so one understands why this has become an urban legend, even though Atari denies the whole thing.
In the end, Lewandowski, the man who dug up the games, sold them on eBay for $107, 930 and spent about $26, 000 on shipping and then split up the rest into donations to Alamogordo. "Alamogordo gets $65,037 to support the police department, the zoo, a veteran's memorial, and other projects. The Tularosa Basin Historical Society, where Lewandowski is vice president, will receive $16,529."
Even though Atari failed as a company it had long-lasting positive effects as it created an urban legend, helped the town of Alamogordo and taught us about the theory of a pure competition market.
https://money.cnn.com/2015/09/01/technology/atari-et/index.html
Great post! This is something that I wondered as well after watching the documentary so it's nice to see someone actually look into it. It seems (and probably is near) impossible to predict what the next urban legend will be that changes from literal trash to something worth thousands upon thousands of dollars. The supply curve is closer to zero, however is fixed and not depended on cost (since no more are being produced), so the price only increases with demand. It seems that for such an "ordinary" item to be worth so much to certain people, it needs to have a fairly widespread base of people that might want it, and a small number of remaining copies. Especially since each item in this category I can think of is from decades ago, if not longer, it would be impossible for anybody to know what to keep and what to not. This is with the exception of the few lucky people who decide to save a specific item, or those who take the years to find an urban legend in a landfill.
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