In the years following a game's release, you can expect people to, you know, play it.

We've grouped these entries into three categories: opened copies at varying degrees of completeness, mint condition and 'graded' examples, and interesting games that we have heard about from collectors, but been unable to find examples or prices for out in the wild.

(Except for the second-to-last entry of section two, which just doesn't make sense.) This certainly raises issues with a definitive list of the rarest and most expensive of these games, and may even lead down a path of philosophical musing on what even is value or collectability in the face of such market fluctuations and speculative manipulation.įor the purpose of this list, we present the highest prices that collectible big boxes have actually sold for, leaving it up to the reader to determine if they are actually worth that much. As much as I wanted this Japanese release of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (opens in new tab), $250 is more than I'm willing to pay-and that's nothing compared to the sticker shock on this list. If you happen to have one tucked away somewhere, you may be surprised what someone will pay for it. Those precious little treasures have a way of getting lost, making complete big box editions of PC games tougher and tougher to find. If you were lucky enough to grow up in a PC gaming household in the '90s, you probably remember a shelf or two of these big box PC games, which often contained goodies like manuals, guides, cloth maps, figurines, and other collectibles. It's actually pretty difficult to find PC games that routinely sell for more than a thousand outside the crazy investor bubble.

'Collectors are buying them up and having them graded as investments.' 'I think the market for console games has hit its peak and attention has turned toward the big box PC games, which is why we're seeing sealed versions start to go for such high prices,' says Stephen Kick, CEO of Nightdive Studios (opens in new tab), which specializes in retro PC remakes and remasters.

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