As collections go, Michael Thomasson’s collection of 10,607 console games is astoundingly impressive. Spread over 35 different gaming systems and collected over 25 years, there is no denying that this a collection to be proud of.
But after 25 years, Michael decided to part with his treasured collection and offered it up to auction through the gaming auction site Game Gavel. Starting with an opening bid of just $1, the collection rocketed in value over the week to it’s closing bid of $750,250. The last day of bidding is dominated by just two bidders with a lust for games and pockets that you’d need a Sat Nav to find your way out of.
The below graph shows the spread of Michael’s collection, bearing in mind that each degree of this pie represents 29 games, which is all the games I currently own since I sell mine off in much smaller groups.
While this is certainly the largest collection of games ever sold – as recognised by Guinness in the video here, it’s not the highest value ever sold.
The highest value auction of video games comes from a sale in 2012 where a collector known only as “Collectors_king” sold a collection of over 5000 games for a whopping $1,238,099.99 (exchanged at the time from €999,999.99). Their collection was comprised of the full run of Nintendo games including everything released for the NES, SNES, N64 and the GameCube. Furthermore, included was the full run of games for Sega with it’s Dreamcast collection of 550 games. What made this collection more valuable perhaps, was the fact that all of the games were still factory sealed.
However, Geek Pride has learned that Collectors_King wasn’t just your standard game collector, he was systematically building this collection, one can only presume with the end goal in site as this speculation from a 2006 forum suggests. Whatever the motivation, games are big money if you collect enough of them or have a unique collection. So the next time you tell someone you’re going to spend the day sat in front of the Xbox, just tell them that it’s part of your retirement plan.
