Children Of The 1990s Recapture Their Youth

Highlights from Ewbank’s April auction of Retro Video Games & Consoles show just how hot this collecting market is becoming. Prices for individual lots are expected to rise to £8000.

“Gamers who grew up with Sega, Nintendo, Valve and Square, playing games like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda, Half-Life and Final Fantasy VII, are now in their thirties and forties with money to spend and a strong nostalgia for their childhood. It’s the perfect recipe for a growing collecting field,” says Ewbank’s specialist Roy Raftery.

The auction not only offers mint condition rarities, it boasts consignments from the best sources.

Top of the list is a Sega TeraDrive, manufactured by IBM in 1991. It was developed for use alongside a PC, so that users could play games and work on their computer at the same time. Complete with its original manual, the lot has been consigned from the private collection of a former owner of an independent UK video games store. The estimate is £4000-8000.

From the same source – and with the same price guide – is a UK/Pal version of Pokémon Yellow WATA 9.6 A+ Sealed – Game Boy. It has been independently graded a 9.0 and A+ – almost perfect – by WATA, the preeminent grading and certification leader for the video game collectible market.

A new and unused Game Boy Console [Planet Hollywood Edition] from 1995, in its original box, is expected to fetch £3500-5000.

Nintendo collaborated with Planet Hollywood to release custom Game Boy systems that featured the restaurant’s logo on the handheld. Like other special promotional Game Boy systems, these are incredibly difficult to find, and this is the rarest of all known U.K. variants. The console is brand new, never been used and inside its original box. VGA does not grade used items and has awarded this an 85+. It also comes from the private collection of the former owner of an independent UK video games store.

Purchased direct from the Nintendo Warehouse in the UK in the mid 90s by the then logistics manager of the company, a European/PAL Nintendo Game Boy Sealed with Tetris & Super Mario Land has been pitched at £3500-5000.

A Game Boy model DMG-01, it comes with a sticker (which is attached to the box and not the seal) detailing the inclusion of Super Mario Land – something unheard of at the time. An additional barcode sticker over the original barcode points to it being a promotional item or a revised model, or even a repacked original model. It also has the red Nintendo seal. 

Only 50 of what are known as the holy grail of Dreamcast consoles were ever made, and one of them is on offer here. The Sega Dreamcast Sonic 10th Anniversary Console – Boxed & New – AND signed to the console by Sonic’s creator Yuji Naka, carries an estimate of £2,500-5,000.

Created in blue and white to commemorate Sonic’s 10th Anniversary, it was only released in Japan but a select few were given as prizes in a competition run by SEGA in 2001 – this one going to the UK winner.

Boxed and in immaculate condition, the console has never been used by the owner and has been boxed for over 20 years. All the items are wrapped inside, and it comes with an unused copy of Sonic Adventure 2.

The item is accompanied by the corresponding emails and shipping details from SEGA to the winner.

“Condition, rarity, detail – many of the same factors that inform value and collectability in other fields apply here,” says Raftery. “Retro Video Games and Consoles are already a strong collecting field globally, and it is only going to get bigger.”