When a video game store in Nebraska closed its doors for the final time in 1994, its entire stock was packed away and placed in storage, waiting for a new owner. Now, almost 30 years later, the stock has been unearthed and documented – and YouTube channel THISISGAMEROOM was there to record it.
As you can see from the video, the collection includes factory sealed SNES, Genesis, Saturn, 3DO and Sega CD games. It's jaw-dropping stuff.
Highlights include Castlevania: Bloodlines, Brainlord, Breath of Fire II, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Sunset Riders, Contra: Hard Corps, TMNT: Turtles in Time, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy III and Secret of Evermore – we're talking thousands of dollars of 'new' old stock here, mixed in with some more common titles, like FIFA and Madden.
As IGN points out, Turtles In Time is worth over $1,400 on its own in factory-sealed form, while Final Fantasy III can fetch up to $1,200 and Sunset Riders $750. Breath of Fire II is worth upwards of $1,200, and Aladdin – despite being one of the less notable titles here in terms of rarity – can fetch up to $500 if in sealed condition. Meanwhile, Chrono Trigger is worth well over $600 in good, used condition, so the factory-sealed price is going to be much higher than that figure.
It's an incredible find, containing several 'Holy Grails' of North American SNES and Genesis collecting.
[source ign.com]
Comments (65)
Am sure he could make quite the pretty penny if he teamed up with Heritage scam auction.
Always interesting to see these rare finds get unearthed out of nowhere. Probably tons about in random warehouses.
@XenoShaun The people at Heritage don't know much about videogames, they pick games that aren't even rare to inflate prices, if only they used games like Earthbound, Panzer Dragoon Saga or Nintendo World Championships, but no, they pick games like Super Mario 64 or Sonic the Hedgehog that have millions of copies around.
What maniac would pay $750 for Sunset Riders when it’s on the eshop for £6 and it’s the far superior arcade version.
Just don’t flood the market by selling them all at the same time. 😉
This is pretty great to be honest. Hopefully there will be a lot more finds like this, it could bring prices down a bit. It also hits the whole Heritage Auction/Wata scam right in the goolies.
I've pretty much given up on retro collecting because everyone and their grandma thinks their old games are worth a fortune. I'm actually happy with my collection and you'd think I'd want retro games to keep going up in value, but in truth, it's the actual act of going to secondhand shops and finding interesting old games for a reasonable price that I really miss. Ebay has slowly ruined the pastime since the early 00s.
That's so freakin cool, it's like finding buried treasure. If I happened upon such a bounty I would just sleep amongst it like Smaug the dragon upon his treasure horde. I see Ninja Warriors there as well, even a loose cart these days is pretty pricey.
It’s a really nice find, but after at least a decade of the vintage video game collector frenzy, it’s not all that exciting.
Yikes. I am super jealous right now.
@HamatoYoshi I think you don‘t get this collecting thing.
My oh my, twenty-three sudo! Whoever this is can pay off his car or buy one.
It takes me back to the days of walking into stores and seeing the walls of 4th Gen games, dreaming of how cool it would be to be able to buy just one during that visit...
@HamatoYoshi those idiots like to be called "collectors" hahahaha.
@Max_the_German I do! I used to collect big time but then the reality hit me that it was all a waste of money, just lusting after an endless supply of material possessions. Now I live by the beach and spend most of my spare time with my dogs, swimming, paddle boarding and out with friends. I don’t need that stuff to me make happy. I used to though, and it was a horrible mindset to have because no matter what you bought, you always wanted something else…..collecting never ends.
@Edu23XWiiU idiots being exactly the appropriate term!!
Secretly I still hope that some day I'll have a find like this.
I'd keep the games of course.
With all the money he’s about to make maybe he can afford a camera with autofocus.
You Know the bloke should put them all up for sale at the original Retail prices, that will sned a shockwave down to these idoits who think their used copy of Space Jam without a manual and crappy box is worth £200.
A while back Pixelheart did this very thing, the owners use to run a video game shop and had Boxes and boxes of sealed Dreamcast games, They stuck them all on their site for sale at the original retail prices, and they still have some stock left. It makes used copies less valuable.
Fed up with these collectors that just buy to put it on the shelf and never play it. I have a fair collection of games but I have played most of them with only about maybe under ten that I have yet to play .. Games are mean't to be played , not stuck on a shelf so you can say hay I have this and I have never opened it. These people ruin it for true gamers.
Remember break that seal and play it folks..
@KITG_GROUP well said! The concept of paying ££££s for a sealed game to stick on a shelf is absolutely ridiculous.
@KITG_GROUP
When I break that seal a little bit of my heart brakes too!
Without going into too much detail.
A friend of a friend recently come into a haul of sealed pokemon booster boxes (Original, Jungle and fossils) I told them they are worth a bit......they sold a box for more than what I earn in 3 years lol
Buyers seemed happy enough that they passes his info to a 2nd buyer who then brought a box.
Shrug some people are so lucky XD (I was offered a box for letting them know and that..........but Im still waiting for it lol.....I dont seriously expect to get one)
Where can I enter my delivery address? My SNES would love to taste those.
It would be cool if these were sold at or near retail price instead of the inflated “worth” but no way the chance to help out some investor would make doing so worthwhile. Gaming isn’t about gaming anymore.
I can remember paying £50 a time for a SNES game back in the early '90s. In today's money adjusting for inflation, that's over £100! So the less desirable games haven't really gone up by that much if we're being honest.
I don't think Zombies Ate My Neighbors is probably that rare of a game, but moreso one of the more desirable games.
I can remember Target selling that game for quite awhile, and certainly they wouldn't give the (especially then) limited shelf space to something they didn't think they could sell a mass number of.
Incredible find. But the camera is almost 100% of focus the whole video
Holy grail find right there. Sealed Chrono Trigger alone gets me drooling
@NinChocolate I know, sucks for hipsters like us who were always into old games (before it was cool-ish)… just seems like the scene is a bit too crowded now. Heh. Well, maybe it helps keep the re-releases coming at least… good for game preservation. But yeah, not as fun as it was in like 2008 or something.
One positive note to end on though. These old games are still neat, all you need is a few to enjoy the “hobby,” I’ve never bothered getting a bunch of high priced games (highest I paid was maybe $75 for Gargoyle’s Quest 2, and maybe $200-ish for Mega Man 1-6) BUT my point is you can still enjoy the games regardless of what other people are doing. Don’t worry about it, just buy one every once in awhile (that you’ll actually play), admire the art/music, find other people who actually like the games and aren’t just obsessed with flexing. I just had to say something because I find it weird how people can “give up” on retro gaming… like why let outside influences ruin it for you?
collecting sealed games for speculative future value is pretty much buying NFTs.
this is cool and everything but id rather tons of USED games flood the market.
Wow, and much of them are Konami games, now I understand why Konami acts bad nowadays, XD
Well, yes, bad joke...
But, wow, really what great finding!!
@Old-Red couldn't agree more, old games cost way too much. I used to enjoy coming across a bunch of old games at a car boot sale and sifting through for a gem.
SNES games have suffered with being over priced for a long time but it's slowly spread to other consoles. I play everything I buy so I don't even consider sealed copies, but something with the box and manual in good condition is nice. My favourite things about retro games are that they don't try to sell you anything, there aren't as many pointless collectables and I don't have to deal with online.
@robe Well… it does suck, but maybe some day retro games will go back to being uncool… although with the amount of views YouTubers get from gaming videos… the good word of how awesome they are continues to be spread. Heh. Yay. (It’s all good, there are still affordable fun games, and boatloads of re-releases… too many to play them all really.)
Smells like fake. Like somebody is trying to gain publicity for the things they have. There's quite a few games from 95 and 96... totally out of place if the shop closed on 94.
Bunch of junk sports games. Good luck moving those.
Hate watching these because even though I don't live in the US I still wish it was me finding it.
@Jumping_Dead, Secret of Evermore came out October 95 in the US, so maybe you're right to be sceptical. Their YouTube channel they replied saying they just guessed a closing date from memory.
@HamatoYoshi The world of the cardboard empire is not one that is easy to be told.
I don’t want to be a party pooper but looking closely at those images looks more like some of these have been shrink wrapped as opposed to having Nintendo’s proper seal of approval. A proper factory seal doesn’t have a line where the plastic has been melted together, they are folded with different material and glued.
Plenty of dodgy eBay sellers trying to pull that move to inflate their prices. Tread carefully if bidding!
@datamonkey on second look, I agree. There's something not right here. They don't have the right seals (although it does seem some SNES games were sealed like this) and if this was legit there's no way someone would sell all this in one go without even checking the value. The camera work and focus is off the scale awful, the dates don't match up and they never open any of the unsealed copies either.
It's also possible they have just bought a huge hoard of sealed repro boxes.
Edit: After checking, SNES games were sealed like this from what I can tell. Unless all the WATA graded copies on Google images are fake too.
Removed - inappropriate language
I'm a collector.
I have a full set of every pal N64 game released, all complete, all mint
I play them,not one of them is sealed.
I have about 10 sealed games for the GameCube, Wii U and a couple of Switch games that I bought years ago to open and play but then a digital version got released for cheap so I bought it digitally.
Now I don't have to open them and can sell them for a huge profit to someone who wants sealed games, one is Ikaruga on the Cube, I now have it on Switch.
Digital has helped me as a collector to make some money, I never intended to and always plan on playing them but because my backlog is about 300+ games big I don't always get around to playing them straight away.
I don't collect to keep them forever unopened but if a digital copy comes around of a game I have sealed and is half the price then I'm better off buying the digital version and selling my sealed copy.
I leave collecting to the collectors, but it is nice seeing these things unearthed after sitting in storage for so long. This was a really good period for quality games, especially for the Genesis and SNES. Castlevania Bloodlines and Ninja Warriors are two of my favorites that were in this haul. I was glad to see Ninja Warriors there in one of the photos as it's not mentioned in the text.
This reminds me of how some cartons of NES Stadium Events were discovered a while back. It's amazing what "new old stock" is still out there.
@Old-Red ah ok interesting. Maybe it was just the Nintendo published snes games that had the seal on then? Third party games may have been like this then I guess?!
"Thousands of dollars worth" is underselling this story by quite a bit. Though that video is... atrocious... I count at least 15 of those plastic bins of games, with around 30 games per bin, for at least about 450 games total, each of which are probably going to be worth a minimum of, what, $100 in today's market?
This haul will clear $50,000 without breaking a sweat, and very likely reaches comfortably into the six-figures.
That camera work was off putting.
Removed - flaming/arguing; user is banned
NBA showdown and aladdin that's clean
I miss the scent of SNES boxes...
Imagine they found a whole warehouse full of GameCube games and the prices went down, I can dream..
They better sell them quickly. Potential buyers are beginning to realise there is no value in the physical storage of digital entertainment. If anyone thinks there is always going to be a greater fool in the future: I have a garden full of tulips to sell!
fun fact about this joint, used to be a place named Gamers, before it was (seemingly?) bought out and the owner of what used to be Gamers tried to steal a bunch of PS4s and whatnot from what was no longer his store and sell them
their main location is where I got my New 3DS from back when it was still Gamers, so it's surprising to see they just unpacked all this right next to me (let alone see a business from Omaha on a european website about nintendo news)
Jesus Christ man, I wanna be the guy who's found them!
lemme get a uhhhhh sealed chrono trigger...
That's pretty awesome, to be honest, I'm kinda jealous.
Owning any game factory sealed is pretty pointless. Why would I buy something for 1k just to put it in the shelf when I could enjoy dozens of games for that price and still have that very game. Sealed games prices are outrageous anyways when all you need is the game and maybe a n instruction book.
@HamatoYoshi It's a hobby for some people. No one is an idiot for having a hobby. You do you. Let other people do what they want. Unless they cant feed their kids or pay their bills, people can spend money on whatever they want. Some might say a house on the beach is idiotic.
I had the misfortune of watching the whole video last night. The douchebag with phone can't seem to focus half the time. He brags the whole time and says he's 'not going to tell' where the games came from. This is the kind of hipster parasite that has latched onto retro gaming in recent years. Why should we celebrate these guys for scooping up old games and flipping them for thousands $$$ per title. I think the whole thing is disgusting...
They said this store closed in 1994? But they found Chrono Trigger and Secret of Evermore? Those games didn't come out til 1995. with Evermore being in October of 1995.
@LikwidYoshi I won’t even say I’ll agree to disagree as I used to be a collector.
A sealed copy of John Madden Football for the SNES recently sold for over $18000 on eBay. Source.. I sold it lol. What an amazing find this is
@GamerDad66 he's the owner of a games store, that sells games, I think it's pretty understandable that he would be excited about finding games to sell at his games store that I can literally take a bus to right now. calling him a "hipster parasite" is just not knowing what the deal here is, plain and simple
i'm decently sure the store has issues staying afloat on retro games alone (they sell DVDs/Blurays and some other electronics now which always weirds me out) so it's both a cool find and a good way to keep a retro store from crashing and burning. it's like the dudes who find earthbound CIB at Goodwill or whatever, it's a big case of "man I wish that was me, cool find!"
Suddenly found by a well known collector group?
@HamatoYoshi
I think you make a good point hiroko saki
This is a sight to behold!
@dew12333 Yes but the joy of opening that box and smelling that new game far outways just gazing from the outside.
Blurry camera there to add to the mystique?
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