Buried Atari games fetch over $100,000

A New Mexico town sold vintage Atari video games buried in a New Mexico landfill for over $100,000. The town of Alamogordo sold 881 cartridges including a copy of Atari’s infamous E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial  for $107,930 through EBay.

Atari’s 1982 E.T.  game was a commercial failure. It was a long-held urban legend that the company buried remaining copies of the game somewhere in the desert following the 1983 video crash. The rumor has since made the Atari E.T. title a sought-after collector’s item.

After years of rumors, a team of archeologists began digging in April for the cartridges. Yahoo News reports diggers found at least one copy of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial  game in the buried stash. That copy sold for $1,535, the most money of all the games.

They also found other Atari games including Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Pele’s Soccer, Yar’s Revenge, Baseball, Centipede, and Warlords. Eager fans from as far as France and Singapore paid an estimated $122.50 per title. A few of the games were also donated to museums around the world.

Alamogordo where the games were found will receive $65,037 of the profits. Another $16,259 will go to the Tularosa Basin Historical Society.

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*Featured Photo (above) credit to USA TODAY Sports

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