Nicholas Godfrey 8th Period- Sales of Unearthed Atari Games Total More Than $100k

An urban legend was recently confirmed as hundreds of Atari cartridges were dug up in a New Mexico landfill. The urban legend was that Atari had dumped hundreds of games. One of the many games that was sold was "E.T. the Extraterrestrial." This Atari game has been named the worst video game ever created and is said to have led to Atari's demise after they only spent 34 days developing it. The 881 cartridges that they sold brought in almost $108,000 on eBay. 23 of the games went to museums worldwide including the Smithsonian and the Deustches Film Museum. There are still 297 of the games that will be sold at a later date.

Analysis: I find it interesting how people will waste so much money on something like this. These games are now obsolete, and I doubt that many people are going to actually play the game. The reason Atari dumped all the "E.T." games was that they were so bad. If people found it useless and didn't want to buy it back then, what gives it any value now? Buying that doesn't give them any value besides a little bit of bragging rights to their friends when they come over. And would the value be significantly decreased if it hadn't been dug up in a landfill and it had just been somebody's copy from home? I find it ridiculous that people put a random monetary amount on something that really has no value. This connects to U.S. history since the Native American tribes put a trading value on wamponoag yet it really didn't give them anything of value.

Source:
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/tech/Sales-of-unearthed-Atari-games-total-more-than-100000--323336681.html