Last weekend I spent $32 on a single Atari cartridge.
If you’ve been following my Atari shelf project, that probably doesn’t sound like much. But up until now, I don’t think I’ve paid more than about $8 for any one game.
A few weeks before the wedding, the owner of the retro game stand at our local flea market told me he was getting a copy of Miner 2049er. He didn’t know what he was going to charge for it yet, but he knew I was working on recreating the Atari print hanging in my office and thought I’d want to know.
When I got home, I looked it up on eBay. Most copies seemed to be selling somewhere between $25 and $45. That was enough for me to decide I wasn’t going to rush into anything. If the game was still there after the wedding, after the honeymoon, and after life settled down a little, I’d think about it.
Then life happened.
The wedding came and went, the honeymoon came and went, work got busy, and the flea market wasn’t really on my radar for a while.
Last weekend was the first time we’d been back in quite a while. When we stopped by the retro game stand, the guy behind the counter immediately recognized us. He told us he had specifically asked his boss to add Miner 2049er to their inventory system because, as he put it, “there’s this couple that comes in every few weeks looking for Atari games.”
Apparently his boss’ response was, “Really?”
Honestly, I probably would have had the same reaction a year ago.
Then he pointed toward the row of glass display cases that hold the more expensive games. Lots of NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64 cartridges. Mixed in among them was Miner 2049er.
Still there.
Still waiting.
The price was $32.
I stood there looking at it for a minute longer than I probably needed to. It wasn’t because I didn’t think it was worth it, and it wasn’t because I couldn’t afford it. I was mostly trying to figure out if I was really about to spend four times more on a single Atari cartridge than I ever had before.
Of course, Sherri had already weighed in on the subject earlier. She knows I sometimes have a hard time spending money on myself, and her opinion was pretty simple:
If it’s still there when things settle down, buy it.
Eventually I handed over the money and became the proud owner of Miner 2049er.
After I got home, I did a little research and found out there’s a reason the game costs more than most Atari cartridges. It wasn’t produced in the same numbers as games like Combat or Pac-Man, and over the years it built a reputation as one of the better games on the system. It’s not especially rare, but it’s uncommon enough that collectors tend to grab it when they find one.
Honestly, though, that wasn’t what stuck with me.
What stuck with me was the realization that I never really debated whether I was going to buy it.
I was only debating when.
A little over a year ago, this whole thing started because my wife suggested it would be fun to recreate a print hanging in my office. At the time it felt like a silly scavenger hunt. We’d wander through flea markets and antique stores looking for specific titles, crossing games off a list and slowly filling the shelf beneath the print.
Somewhere along the way, though, the project changed.
Now I know which games are common. I know which ones are harder to find. I have opinions about label variations. I check display cases when we walk into a retro store. Apparently I’m the kind of person who spends part of a Saturday morning debating the value of a forty-year-old cartridge called Miner 2049er.
And the funny thing is, I’m completely okay with that.
The cartridge is sitting on the shelf now alongside the rest of the collection. There are still plenty of games left to find before I can recreate the print completely, and I’m sure at least a few of them will end up costing more than I’d like.
But if there’s one thing I learned from buying Miner 2049er, it’s that I crossed that line a while ago.
I just didn’t realize it until I was standing in front of the display case.
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