New Mexico Will Eventually Sell Off Found Copies Of E.T.

Atari couldn't profit from the historically terrible E.T. game, but maybe the state of New Mexico can. The city off Alamogordo, New Mexico plans to sell off the cartridges that were recently unearth from its landfill.

New Mexico's space museum is helping appraise and certify over 700 of the 1,300 copies of the classic Atarti 2600 title E.T., and will then prepare the games for sale. While some of the remaining games will be distributed to local museums, and given to the documentary team that helped dig them up.

"We have been working with the space museum for curation, both for
displaying and selling the games; they are now artifacts," Alamogordo
mayor Susie Galea recently told Polygon. "The City Commission acted on Tuesday to
give 100 of the games to (documentary production companies) Lightbox
and Fuel Entertainment. There are 700 that we can sell."

The city hasn't yet decided how much to sell the games for, or where video game historians will have to go to purchase a piece of history.

For more on the dig that uncovered the fabled cache of cartridges, head here. For more pictures from the event care of Microsoft, head here.

 

[Source: Polygon]

 

Our Take
It's interesting to see that games that once wouldn't sell at a discount might soon get put up for sale because of the massive legend that now surrounds them. I'll be interested to see how quickly they sell and how big a price tag a piece of trash fetches.