Today in offensive sums of money:

Wai-wai-wait, I just got it. It's not about the game at all, it's about rich people rich people-ing. Which is a realization I probably should have come to earlier...

"Sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of
me fanning a stack of large bills out in front of myself."

-Some rich

Ok, not a huge house, but still, a house.

Huh? What am I talking about? That's a reasonable question, and I'm glad you asked. Are you sitting down? Good. You know how there's been this phenomenon in the last few years of collectors paying huge, like offensively large sums of cash for old video game cartridges? Like, usually NES games and often complete, unopened copies of Super Mario Bros. and they go for over a hundred thousand dollars. That's thousand with a "t." I mean, that's a house to most people. Like, an average American home. 

Anyway, I mention this because a copy of SMB (acronym!) just sold for an incredible, stupefying, should be goddamn illegal, six hundred and sixty thousand dollars of money. 

No really, like an actual crime.

Although if I'm being honest...

Ok, so what kind of idiot pays that much for a game when there are forty million copies of it in the world, right? Obviously it's the fact that it's thirty-five years old, unopened, from a rare print run, and in pristine condition that makes it valuable. And that's whatever, but I think I sometimes get stuck on the idea that people spend this kind of money on these games because they're fans, and that may be true, but it's also an investment to them. I'm a fan too, but if I had six hundred grand lying around, I'd put it in the bank or something. Pay off some bills. Maybe buy a house.

Because even if it is an investment, isn't it kind of a dumb one? Admittedly I don't know anything about collecting, but this isn't a Klimt painting. This is a video game and at least some of its appeal is based on nostalgia and that won't be around forever. Nobody's dropping this much on Atari games, and I kind of wonder if it isn't because that particular bubble has simply burst as the people who remember them fondly have simply aged out of caring. And if that's the case how long until the NES bubble follows? 

Of course it could also be because Atari games were never very good. 
Again, I'm not not an expert on the video game collector's market, but 
seriously, why were they such a big deal in the late 70's? They sucked.