• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Ultima I

That is not Ultima I. This game is Ultima : Escape from Mt. Drash and it is unique to the VIC-20. It plays nothing like any other Ultima. This game is extremely rare. Ultima I never came out for the VIC-20, it came out for the Commodore 64.
 
Further, the game in that level of complete condition is extremely rare. There are what? 8 known copies in the level of condition? For a guy who claims to not be a collector, Peter has a LOT of inventory (and not all of it acquired back in the day, as he's beat me out of several auctions in recent years)
 
Seriously though. Who would think that something that looks like this would be an item to keep over the years to fetch over $1000 I could see maybe paying $12 but doubt I'd look at it more than once if it was $20.
$_57.JPG
 
Up to US $1,525.00 now.

And as far as I can tell, the bits for this software are already floating around out there. So anyone who says piracy hurts the value of vintage software... well, this just proves them wrong.
 
Piracy hurts the sale of new software. The vast majority of hardware collectors would not pay $20 for that item if they could pirate the game. People who spend that kind of money on rarities will never open the box.

I wonder what will happen in 20 years with the value of that item when most of the people who played Ultima back in the day die off.
 
Aaand sold for 3,050.00?!? :wow:

And now I already see some people dragging out regular copies of Ultima thinking they can sell for an arm and a leg.
 
Welcome to market economics, where you can see supply and demand in action. Escape from Mt. Drash is very rare, and because a few of them got to sales that high, now they all go for that high. If you are trying to complete your Ultima collection, you are limited by the # of Mt. Drash's in the wild, and may be willing to pay that much.

I have several rare commercial titles in my collection, but they're "worthless" because they're not tied to a popular, successful, well-loved franchise such as the Sierra/Infocom/Origin titles. The example I routinely pull out (those who know me are groaning at this point) is "Wibarm" which had a 5000-unit run in the USA and didn't sell well. I own the same copy I bought in 1989 and my informal count of copies left in the world is around 100 -- yet I've seen a few copies go up on ebay and remain unsold even at $10. My point: If nobody wants what you have, it's worthless.

I'm not bitter, BTW -- my collection is not an investment. I collect things that hold either nostalgic value for me, or games that were programmed particularly well (regardless of how good the game is). That latter condition makes me somewhat unique among PC game collectors, I think (which also makes a lot of my collection worthless! :)
 
Wibarm is a particular shame. It plays similarly to Thexder but is much more complex game. Thexder sold well, its sequel (Thexder II : Fire Hawk) presumably did decent business, so I think the blame has to be laid at Broderbund's feet.
 
It is kind of funny how much people will spend to finish a particular collection. I sold my NIB Infocom Cornerstone for a decent chunk of change so somebody could finish their Infocom collection (its a database and not a game). The money went for items I wanted more. Games do seem to sell for quite a bit more then apps of the same vintage.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top