Old Computer Game Covers - Collectible, Or Just Nostalgia?

zentechno writes "While cleaning out some very old boxes in a long-untouched closet, I discovered my first supply of PC games, some of which came out when 386s were new. While there's almost zero use for these, I still think the cover art is quite cool. I found the original Zork, its sequels, Enchanter, and Sorcerer from InfoCom, Star Trek: 'The Kobayashi Alternative' from Simon & Schuster, Pool of Radiance and Eye of the Beholder from SSI, Loom by Lucas Games, Nuclear War from New World, Annals of Rome and FireZone from PSS, Sidewinder from EA, and Defender of the Crown from Mindscape, to name many. I loved these games, and wonder if there's any sort of serious collector's market out there as exists for vinyl album art — or is it just a personal thing?" I know I'll always hang on to my copies of Star Control II and Think Quick! from when I was a wee PC gamer. What's still rattling around in your closet?

It's not the album art.

[thereofone]

It is how many copies exist. For example, while the Rolling Stones' Thee Satanic Majesties Request has a great hologram cover, few mint UK mono copies exist.

Compilations

[owlman17]

You didn't say in what condition they're in. Mint/Near-mint? Good, Fair? Anyway, to give you an idea, a brand-new (presumably M/NM) copy of Masterpieces of Infocom [amazon.com] can cost up to almost $300. I'm not sure how much the boxes alone would cost though. Would be nice if the original manuals, collectibles, floppies were included. (Floppies might still work.) Compilations like Ultimate Might and Magic, Ultima Collection (I have them) fetch $30-60. I don't plan on selling the boxes. Ah, the good old days.

I collect them.

[snarfies]

I have a computer game box collection from my Commodore 64 days. Go back in time 10 or so years - a website called lemon64.com was just starting up and they were putting box covers online. Turned out I owned some rarities and alternate versions of boxes they already had scans of, so I scanned what I had and my scans are still in use there (see http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemon64.com/games/details.php%3FID%3D2309%26coverID%3D1370 [lemon64.com] - that box is sitting on my bookshelf right now).

I consider my boxes to be interesting and nostalgic. Even if they aren't worth any money, I consider them to be important cultural artifacts - after all, was not my entire generation the first to be raised with video games? Most of the games has been preserved through emulation, but the boxes aren't so easily replicated.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

number of programmers have stayed largely static

You obviously haven't read the credits for a recent game :-)

Compare Grand Theft Auto 4 core+engine team (Rockstar North+Rage) with GTA 1 core team (2008 vs 1997) approximately:
Coders: 40 vs 16
Artists: 88 vs 18
Design: 28 vs 6

Not including publisher credits since they never bear any resemblance to reality anyway.

And that is nothing like the size of credits on an EA game, which would outpopulate a small country...

Artists and content producers have scaled faster than coders, but there are still big coding teams out there.

The "official" answer: It Depends

[Trixter]

As someone who runs a software collector's mailing list [oldskool.org] and a co-author of a collectible software grading scale [mobygames.com], I think I'm qualified to report: It depends. The collectible value of software is pretty much the same as any other collectible:

• Desirability (not the same as rarity)
• Availability
• Condition

The reason rarity != value is because, if nobody knows about it, nobody wants it. I own a fairly nice copy of Wibarm [mobygames.com], and I believe I'm the only one left in the USA to own it. But since nobody has heard about it, and it's not part of some Infocom/Sierra/Lucasarts legacy, nobody would offer me more than $20 for it.

Condition is obviously important. Incomplete items are worth nearly nothing, and even if it's complete it should be in decent condition (ie. the box isn't crushed). If it's in mint condition (still shrinkwrapped), you are holding gold.

One exception to this is diskettes: For reasons I don't quite agree with, most collectors feel that the condition of the diskette media is not nearly as important as the other materials, mainly because most of the software has been cracked and available. I disagree, because without working originals, you can never be sure if the cracked versions are complete (and in my experience easily 15% of them are not).

The ebay market for collectible software started to dry up around 2005, but for a very long time it was a hotbed of collectible software buying and selling. You can still find some reasonable bargains (ie. an average of $20-$30 a title) but most of the time it still costs $200 for a Kilrathi Saga [mobygames.com], or $1600 for an original Infocom Starcross Saucer [mobygames.com].