Atari Auctions Memorabilia Through Sotheby’s

An auction recently showed up on Sotheby’s website for a huge lot of Atari memorabilia, including original concept designs and promotional materials. This is much bigger than your typical “guy selling his entire video game collection” eBay auction; this is history. And if it’s being put up on Sotheby’s, you know it must be massive:

“An extensive archive of original marketing materials (as detailed below) from the “Golden Age” of Atari, ca. 1981 to 1983, comprising more than 2,000 items of widely varying sizes and formats, including manuscript memorandum, internal specification guidelines, original sketches, blue lines, mechanicals, proofs, color separations (including acetates), and screen diagrams; the archive is mostly related to marketing materials for Atari games and game consoles, especially boxes and manuals, but includes some early design and graphic work for specific game characters and components; the archive contains mostly English-language materials, but proofs and mechanicals for cartons and manuals in French, German, Spanish, and Italian are also present. The whole archive organized into approximately 135 large file folders for graphic materials.”

There’s a more detailed description of the items on the site, but it mostly just lists the games that the materials are from and gives a general history of Atari. There are three pictures of some of the items below; the most interesting has to be the original concept designs for Pole Position. So how much is this all estimated to sell for? $150,000 to $250,000 USD. You better start saving up or selling your children now.

I don’t know what someone would actually do with all this stuff though, unless someone plans to open their own Atari museum. Personally, I’d love to just look through it, but not to the tune of $150,000.