College professor sells his entire collection of 11,000 video games for $750,000

“So, honey, I found the missing cat,” declared Michael Thomasson, after discovering the mummified corpse of the not-so-runaway-family-cat stuffed behind one of the many shelves housing his collection of 11,000 video games and 100 consoles. To be honest, I don’t really know if Thomasson, 43, college professor, is cat-person, nor if his cat ever “ran away,” but what I do know is that new things lurk behind Everest-like mountains of video games: new walls, new space, and new beginnings. Thomasson, as you see, is a Guinness world record holder for being the proprietor of the “World’s Largest Video Game Collection,” and he’s about to part with it $750,000, a fraction of what it cost him.

Thomasson is not your ordinary semi-crazed collector, sacrificing his potential life’s savings to become the king of Hummel’s; instead, the man stuck to a strict budget of $3,000 per year (on average). “I rarely pay more than $10 to $15 for anything,” Thomasson tells RETRO. “So, most of my items were bought inexpensively. I look for the deal and am patient. To get to the number of items I have with a limited budget, I had to be disciplined and extremely efficient.” Basic mathematics would have you believe that Thomasson spent no more than $60,000 to $80,000 on what has reached $750,250 in the closing of Sunday’s GameGavel auction. 

This is the first time I’m seeing a pre-sixth-generation Super Mario game on a CD.

Thomasson elucidates that operating seven independent gaming stores in the nineties, running the Good Deal Games website since 1998, and working out of another chain in the subsequent decade gave him a competitive edge, permitting him to buy new releases in pristine-condition at discounted rates. Head on over to Good Deal Games to peak at the collection in wondrous panoramic view; 8,300 of his games even feature a complete box and manual.
 
Thomasson’s 11,000 game collection excluded the 1,000 duplicate titles he donated to the International Center for the History of Electronic Game s.

According to GameGavel’s price history, the auction began at a base of $150,000 and climbed the ladder as users “peeps_10091991970” and “catch123” furiously outbid one another. Once “peeps_10091991970’s” final bid is verified, the transaction will account for the single largest sales of video game items on record, assuming the bid won’t turn out to be as fraudulent as the $100,000 bid for rare Nintendo World Championship cartridge auction.

Via Ars Technica