When we first stumbled upon the auction for the Guinness-certified "World's Largest Video Game Collection" a few weeks ago, bidding had only reached $50,000, short of the auction reserve price. When the GameGavel auction came to a close late Sunday night, though, the price was significantly higher: $750,250 to be exact.
According to the GameGavel price history, the bulk of the bidding action took place last Wednesday, as users "catch123" and "peeps_10091970" rapidly outbid one another from a starting point of $150,000. The final bid has yet to be publicly verified, though, so it's still possible this could be another hoax bidding situation similar to the one surrounding a $100,000 Nintendo World Championship cartridge auction earlier this year.
If the sale goes through at this price, though, it will be among the largest single sales of video game items in history. It won't be the largest, though; a 7,000-game set, including "complete" game collections for 22 popular systems, reportedly sold for more than $1.2 million last year.
Seller Michael Thomasson has said in interviews that he set a "regimented budget" averaging about $3,000 a year for the past 20 years to build up his collection of more than 11,000 games and 100 consoles. That's a pretty good return on investment for a part-time hobby and should hopefully go a long way toward helping Thomasson with the unspecified "family obligations" that led to the sale in the first place.
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