E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and other carts that were buried in a desert landfill turned out to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Last year, as part of production on a documentary, excavation of a New Mexico landfill that was long-rumored to contain Atari 2600 cartridges revealed a cache of games abandoned by the platform holder during the 1983 North American video game crash.
Now, New Mexico's Alamogordo Daily News reports that the unearthed cartridges have so far netted $107,930.15 when sold to collectors on eBay. 297 cartridges are still in the hands of the Tularosa Basin Historical Society.
"There's 297 we're still holding in an archive that we'll sell at a later date when we decide what to do with them," the society's vice president, Joe Lewandowski, told the newspaper.
He also revealed that 23 of the cartridges went to museums. 881 were sold. A variety of games were unearthed, including not just E.T. but also Asteroids, Missile Command, Warlords, Defender, Star Raiders, Swordquest, Phoenix, Centipede, and Super Breakout, according to the Daily News report.
$65,037.78 of the proceeds will go to the city of Alamogordo, while the Tularosa Basin Historical Society is slated to get $16,259.44.
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