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00:05I'm Mike Wolfe, and I've spent my life traveling the world chasing forgotten objects and the
00:11histories behind them. People everywhere are turning up artifacts every day, often by chance.
00:19And if you're lucky, some of these finds can be worth serious money.
00:27Tonight, on History's Greatest Picks. From the wild ideas that never took off, to the ones that
00:35changed everything. And for those that know where to look, there is serious money to be
00:40made in the misfires, the trial runs, and the weirdly wired. Because there might not have
00:46been a smartphone without a little blue box. Really simple little device, but it was a game-changer.
00:52Long before artificial intelligence, there was the mother computer.
00:57One of the most iconic pieces of sci-fi movie history in existence.
01:03And home gaming began not with a bang, but with a palm.
01:08This plastic black and white console would usher in a pop culture revolution.
01:15So let's flip the switch. Let's dial it up. And let me tell you the stories behind History's
01:21Greatest Picks.
01:28Some pieces of technology are so historically significant and so valuable that collectors
01:34will go to extraordinary lengths to preserve them for posterity. Like the co-founder of Microsoft,
01:41Paul Allen, he spent nearly three decades amassing a collection of groundbreaking tech, which sold
01:47at auction in 2024 for more than $16 million. And then there's the kind of stuff that collectors
01:54can only dream about. Sometimes it's simply hiding inside a cardboard box stacked inside a suburban
02:30garage.
02:33So he's going through the garage and he comes to this box and he lifts the lid and it just
02:40takes him back. It's very simple. It's black and white with two dials and a red button in
02:48the middle. It doesn't look like much. It's very unassuming. But this plastic black and white
02:54console would usher in a pop culture revolution.
03:01It all starts in 1972 with a little black and white console and a scrappy startup with a big
03:09idea. Their name, Atari.
03:13Atari. Atari gives Alcorn a specific task. We want you to create an electronic version of
03:20table tennis. And the purpose of this is that Atari wants to bring a new game into arcades.
03:31So Alcorn rolls up his sleeves, gets to work. He starts soldering wires to these circuit boards.
03:39He gets a $75 black and white TV and converts it into a monitor.
03:44Puts the whole thing into a cabinet so you can kind of stand up in front of it. And he
03:47gets a
03:47couple of controllers. He gets a coin slot.
03:50And the game, once it's finished, is called Pong.
03:57This is one little block on one side, a little block on the other side. And you're trying to get
04:01it past your opponent.
04:03Bing.
04:04Boom.
04:05So they take this prototype version of Pong and they put it in a bar, Andy Capp's pub in Sunnyvale.
04:12Several days later, they got a phone call from the bar owner. Hey man, you got to come down here
04:16and fix this. It's broken. What do you mean it's broken? It's all hardwired. I soldered it. And what
04:21had happened? There were so many quarters. And the receptacle was jammed full of money.
04:29The reason for this is because Pong becomes so popular at this bar that people start lining up
04:35outside the bar at 10 o'clock in the morning, loose chains just filling all of their pockets
04:41in the hopes that they can get their round in. And that's when they said, we've got a hit.
04:48As you might expect, thousands of these units that have been shipped off to different bars
04:52and arcades around America, and they're all doing gangbusters. This thing has taken the
04:58nation by storm.
04:59Atari sees the significance of just how popular the game is in arcades. And they say to themselves,
05:05this is awesome. But what if we could take this same experience of Pong and put it in your house?
05:13Now, for Alcorn, the main challenge here is to miniaturize everything because people don't
05:17want to buy a cabinet to put in their living room next to the TV just so they can play
05:20Pong.
05:21So Alcorn and his team are like, okay, they take all the circuitry of the arcade game and
05:27they compress it into one single chip. They then create this black and white plastic console,
05:36put the chip inside the console. They also add a very small speaker.
05:42Because Pong's not just something you watch on the screen. It makes noises. It's visceral when
05:49you play it. Everybody knows that sound.
05:51Boop, boop, boop. It becomes synonymous with the game. That sound basically brings Pong to life.
05:57If you have no sound, the game is just lifeless.
06:03So Atari manages to make a prototype of this home version. Sears, which is one of the biggest
06:10retailers in America at the time, catches wind of it. And they put in an order for $200,000
06:14for that Christmas.
06:17And by Christmas, 1975, Pong and the Atari home gaming system is in stores for $98.95. And it sells
06:27like wildfire.
06:30America is completely changed that Christmas. The home video game system now exists.
06:38I remember the one guy in the neighborhood that had Atari. At the time, you're like,
06:43he must be rich. He has video games at home. It was a game changer, pun intended.
06:48And they become this gigantic video game company, Atari, from this prototype.
06:55Nearly 50 years later in 2022, after Alan Alcorn rediscovers his prototype, he decides to put
07:02it up for auction. After 35 bids, the legendary piece of gaming history, which originally retailed
07:08for only $98.95, sells for $270,000. And the wildest part? Apparently, it still works.
07:22For every spy movie that dreamed up a gadget, there was someone out there that was actually
07:27making one. They are the real-life cues. The inventors working in secrecy, building tools
07:34stranger than fiction. Like the KGB umbrella with a poison tip that sold for more than $19,000.
07:41Or the suicide tooth that sold for more than $7,000. And then there's the typewriter that doesn't type
07:50at all.
07:59A guy is rummaging through a flea market in Bucharest, Romania. And if you're a treasure hunter,
08:05there's few places on earth so rife for the picking as Romania.
08:11It's been conquered and reconquered and taken again by dictators and Nazis and communists.
08:19Centuries of history, all in one city.
08:24And I think what all this adds up to is that it's going to have some of the best flea
08:28markets
08:28in the world. They might have things left over from World War II. They might have interesting
08:31artifacts left over from the Cold War. So it pays to keep your eyes open. And this one guy,
08:39he's keeping his eyes open, and he spots something.
08:43In one of the stalls, one of the vendors presents a wooden case, nothing special. And he opens
08:48it up and he says, oh, it's just an old typewriter.
08:54But here's the thing. This guy was no ordinary customer. And he knew that this was not actually
09:00an old typewriter. Yes, it's got a keyboard, but it's got lights, it's got rotors, it's got a plug
09:06board. This guy was a mathematician. And more importantly, he had also served as a cryptographer.
09:13So this man was a code breaker. And when he looked at this old typewriter, he realized that's not an
09:18old
09:18typewriter. That's an Enigma machine.
09:23These are immensely valuable, because they played such a pivotal role in World War II.
09:31He knows exactly what he's looking at. The price tag, 100 euros, or about 113 bucks. An unbelievable
09:41price for one of the most famous encrypting devices in history.
09:47When the war starts, the German military makes extensive use of it. It's the primary tool for
09:55providing operational security protection for broadcast messages from all branches of the
10:00German military. The Enigma machine operates through a plug board, a series of rotors that allows a plain
10:10text message to be encoded into alphabet soup gobbledygook.
10:16So they're sending a bunch of scrambled letters that make no sense, except for the people on the other
10:23end who have a corresponding machine set to the same settings.
10:29But the big mystery is, how did a top secret German Enigma machine find its way to a Romanian
10:35flea market decades after the war?
10:40The Romanians fought with Nazi Germany during the opening years of the Second World War. That means that
10:47Romanian ground combat units serving alongside the Wehrmacht, they would have been issued the same Enigma
10:54machine that German units are using. The Germans manufactured over 20,000 of these machines, but today there are
11:02very few in perfect working condition.
11:05So now that the math professor has the Enigma machine, he decides to clean it up. He looks for
11:11original parts and finds them, and he fully renovates it and turns it back into a working Enigma machine.
11:18After spending $113 to buy it, the professor restores it and puts it up for auction, pocketing $51,000.
11:27That's one heck of a return on your investment, but not nearly as impressive as Mark Twain's real
11:33typewriter, which sold for $106,000.
11:41When it comes to movie props, sci-fi tech can bring in serious money. One collector wanted Darth
11:48Vader's helmet and armor so badly that he paid over a million bucks for it. While the X-Wing
11:54Starfighter was sold to another guy for more than $3 million. But there's one piece of sci-fi
12:01history with an even bigger price tag. He literally defined what movie robots would look like for a
12:08generation. And for one collector, he was the coolest robot of them all.
12:16There are a lot of auctions that you can look at in the history books and say, oh, that was
12:20a big deal.
12:20Oh, look at that. That was a big deal. But every once in a while, there is an auction that
12:24everyone
12:25has their eyes on in the weeks leading up. And this is that.
12:33On the back lot of MGM, they are having one of the all-time memorabilia bonanzas.
12:4140 years of memorabilia. From seven sound stages, more than 350,000 items all went up in the same
12:49auction. For collectors, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Everything from Ben-Hur to the Wizard of
12:56Oz was up for grabs. For movie lovers, this was as good as it gets.
13:02Now, one guy who loves movies and who is there is William Malone. And there's one in particular
13:09that he's obsessed with, and that is the movie Forbidden Planet. Forbidden Planet is a movie from
13:151956, and it's got lots of human stars. But the real star of that movie is Robbie the Robot.
13:23It looked great. Big glass dome with lights and gears and moving parts. It just looked like a real
13:30robot, the way you would imagine one to look. Previously, there had been other robots in movies,
13:35but they were these kind of lumbering tin can, sort of giant metal cylinder type thing.
13:42At the time, Robbie the Robot cost about $100,000 to build. That's over a million dollars in today's
13:48money. That was, I think, was 7% of the entire film's budget was spent on this Robbie the Robot
13:54prop.
13:55When William is a kid, and he goes and he sees this movie, The Forbidden Planet, it's not like
14:00anything he's seen before. And the whole thing just completely blows his mind. He really becomes
14:06sort of obsessed with this film and owning a piece of its history.
14:1214 years after the release of Forbidden Planet, William Malone, now all grown up,
14:18goes to the auction with the hope of taking home a piece of movie history, maybe even Robbie himself.
14:27Unfortunately, he is not even close to being able to afford some of the items that are being auctioned.
14:33And worse yet, Robbie the Robot's not even up for sale.
14:37But his experience there, his knowledge that now these movie studios actually do get rid
14:42of things, he decides to stay persistent. So he keeps kind of contacting the studio and
14:47saying, hey, you know, what are you doing with Robbie?
14:49Are you keeping it? Are you selling it? Are you selling it to me? When can I have it?
14:53Give me the robot. So William is pestering to find out what's going on with Robbie when he
14:57learns that actually Robbie the Robot has already been sold. And sadly, not to him.
15:04Now, the person who bought Robbie the Robot is a guy named Jim Brooker. He's got this big place
15:09called Movie World, Cars of the Stars. That's where Robbie the Robot sits, is in this place. And
15:18Robbie's not being properly taken care of.
15:20This museum is open to the public. And you can imagine, teenagers in the 70s, these prompts,
15:26including Robbie the Robot, you can actually reach right out and touch them. And over the years,
15:31he really falls into a state of disrepair.
15:35The thing about William alone is he's obsessed. And he really wants to have that robot. He can't
15:41have the real thing, so he's going to do the next best thing, which is to build one of his
15:44own.
15:44And when he's done, he's got to Robbie the Robot that looks pretty darn good. In fact,
15:49it looks better than the original, which is wasting away.
15:53One thing about passionate collectors, we don't give up.
15:57So in 1979, William hears that Movie World is closing up shop, and all its props are up for sale.
16:05And he knows that this is his chance. So he goes, and he shows up, hands over $10,000,
16:12and takes Robbie.
16:14So William alone finally gets to start work on what he's been wanting to do for decades,
16:20which is to restore that robot to its former glory. Here's the best part.
16:24When he paid $10,000 for Robbie the Robot, it came with the original shipping containers.
16:30And those original shipping containers also have replacement parts. Replacement parts
16:36that have never been used. So he's got pristine, original pieces he can use to restore that robot.
16:44So he goes to work on truly restoring Robbie the Robot, and he's got everything he needs to do the
16:50work.
16:50Now, two of the details that he wanted to get just right are the hands, and that iconic glass dome
16:56that goes over the head. And he's able to do it. The hands look perfect, and he's able to cast
17:01that dome
17:02from the original mold that it came with.
17:05He gets every knob, every bell and whistle to look exactly the way it needs to.
17:10And so instead of, like, turning it around and trying to sell it to somebody or putting it on display
17:16for other people to look at, he enjoys it himself. He puts this robot in his home, and he lives
17:23with
17:23Robbie for 37 years. In fact, he even makes a routine of having coffee with Robbie in the kitchen
17:30every morning.
17:33As collectors, we're all just caretakers of these things. So eventually, William comes
17:39around, and he decides to put Robbie back out into the world. In November of 2017, he goes
17:46up for auction. Robbie, who was originally bought for $10,000, now sells for an out-of-this-world
17:53price of $5.3 million, which is a record for a movie prop.
18:02Celebrity always sells, no matter the item. And the tech world is no exception. Take Steve
18:09Jobs. One of his old job applications, written as a teenager, sold at auction for a remarkable
18:16$175,000. His old Birkenstocks? Yeah, the ones he actually wore? In 2022, a collector shelled
18:25out more than $218,000. But the real story and the real money starts with the first piece
18:32of primitive-looking tech he ever sold. Something no one could have imagined would kickstart a
18:39global tech revolution.
18:49two guys are going room to room through the dorms, making some deals. One is a student,
18:55and the other is a dropout. And they meet this dude named Bill Claxton.
19:01They're gonna sell him something for $150. And what is sold is illegal. But it's not drugs.
19:09It was small, like four inches by three inches. It had a few buttons on the top.
19:14It's got embedded circuitry. It's powered internally by a nine-volt battery.
19:20These two dorm hustlers that are selling this illegal contraband, they are no other than Steve Jobs and
19:28Steve Wozniak. They were selling this thing called a blue box, and it was used for a phenomenon known
19:35as phone-freaking. Not freaking with an F, freaking with a PH. A kid in the 1950s discovered that if
19:43he
19:44whistled at exactly 2,600 Hertz, it mimicked the internal mechanism that phone companies used to
19:53communicate between devices. By whistling into the phone, he could hack the phone system and
20:00actually make phone calls. In particular, he could make free long-distance phone calls, which are
20:08otherwise pretty darn expensive. But to whistle at exactly 2,600 Hertz, you need absolute perfect pitch.
20:16Luckily, Captain Crunch issued a souvenir giveaway whistle that hit exactly 2,600 Hertz. The secret's out.
20:27In an underground network of geeks and nerds and people with tech proclivities start building so-called
20:33blue boxes.
20:35In October of 1971, Steve Wozniak reads an article in Esquire magazine about these phone-freakers called
20:44The Secrets of the Blue Box, and this sparks an idea.
20:49So Wozniak decides he's going to build one of these things.
20:52He calls up his buddy, Steve Jobs, and says, we've got to make one of these blue boxes.
20:57And he just loves the technical challenge of it all.
21:00So he makes, in three weeks, a brand new blue box from scratch.
21:06Really simple little device. But technologically speaking, it was a game changer.
21:13Everything else up to this point has been analog. This thing is a computer. It's phone-freaking digitally.
21:22So Jobs and Wozniak have this thing built. They need to prove that it works.
21:26And so they do a test call. They're big thinkers.
21:28So instead of just making a call to a random person somewhere in Japan,
21:32they decide to pretend to be Henry Kissinger and to call the Pope.
21:37And the call gets put through. The phone rings.
21:44But no one answers because it's the middle of the night and the Pope's asleep.
21:48But it works.
21:50They start to sell them. This is where Steve Jobs enters as entrepreneur.
21:54Steve and Steve made a great team because Wozniak was a great technical mind.
22:00And Steve Jobs, well, he knew how to sell.
22:04He's got the pitch.
22:05He's getting up in front of these undergrads and saying, you miss your family.
22:09What if I told you that here I have a device that could allow you to call anywhere in the
22:16world for free?
22:18Romania, Bulgaria, China, Japan. Customers are enthralled and eagerly pull out their wallets.
22:26One of the people they sell to is Bill Claxton. Him and his brother, they live 300 miles apart.
22:31So now they can talk all they want every day. And before the campus police can catch up with them,
22:37they've already sold 40 units and earned $6,000.
22:42$6,000 in 1972. And the Lennon McCartney of the computer world is born.
22:51Steve Wozniak now with Steve Jobs partners, and they go on to invent the Apple one. And it's the start
22:59of
23:00the home computer revolution. Steve Jobs has said this himself. If there had been no blue box,
23:06there would be no Apple. And that means there would be no iPhone. And that means we would live in
23:11a very
23:12different world. That same blue box bought by Bill Claxton in 1972 for 150 bucks goes up for auction 45
23:24years
23:24later and sells for $125,000. But in 2023, an unopened first generation iPhone found in a drawer,
23:34still sealed in plastic, sold at an auction for an astonishing $190,000.
23:47Some rivalries are legendary. Coca-Cola versus Pepsi, McDonald's versus Burger King.
23:54And then there's a rivalry between Sony and Nintendo. But this one didn't begin as competition.
24:00It began as collaboration. And it's a story that might have been forgotten,
24:05if it hadn't been for a chance find at a clearance sale.
24:14We're in the middle of the financial crisis, and companies are falling like nine pins. And this
24:20includes the Advanta Corporation, which is filing for bankruptcy.
24:25They are out of money. So they have to get rid of and sell off everything.
24:31At Advanta, there's an employee by the name of Terry Diebold. He is responsible for helping to
24:37clean out the office to sort and to organize things like all the furniture, boxes of random items.
24:43He's also organizing some of the dishware. Very fine china, very fine silverware that was
24:49primarily used by executives. And so he thinks, okay, when this lot number goes up,
24:55I'm going to bid on it. It'll get a great deal. When the day of auction comes,
25:01those boxes come up. He raises his paddle and he wins the lot.
25:06And he pays $75. And they say, the lot is all yours. And then he sees what the lot actually
25:13is.
25:13And it's more than he was bargaining for. It's so much stuff that Terry has to do two trips
25:21in the car to take all these boxes back to his house. When he gets home, he opens up all
25:27these
25:27boxes and he, yeah, the dishware's there, silverware's there. Well done. But inside are also hundreds of
25:35music CDs and neckties and plaques and shoes. And then there's this one item.
25:45He also sees a gaming console.
25:50Now it's one that you would never see on the shelves.
25:53You've got a slot for game cartridges to be slid in, to be put in. But then you also have
25:59an area where CD-ROM can be put in there. You've also got a control pad. So you've got the
26:06D-pad.
26:07And then he notices that it's labeled both Sony and then on the other side, it's labeled Nintendo.
26:14And that's weird because Nintendo and Sony were notorious rivals.
26:20Now, Terry is not a gamer himself. So he does what most of us do. He puts it away. He
26:25stores it in the
26:26attic and forgets about it. If only Terry knew what he was holding in his hands.
26:33Although Terry might not know it, this mysterious one-of-a-kind console,
26:38found in a random box at a bankruptcy sale, has one heck of a story to tell.
26:44A story that begins in 1991 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.
26:51You have a Sony engineer there by the name of Ken Kutaragi who is ready to display a brand new
26:58prototype that he's been working on. He unveiled this revolutionary partnership between Nintendo and
27:05Sony. Now, they had this brand new console that they created together that could play Nintendo games
27:13and run Sony software. It combines all kinds of different stuff. A cartridge, a CD-ROM. This is
27:23a marriage made in gaming heaven. Some marriages are meant to last forever. Some marriages end before
27:30they even get to the altar. Only 24 hours, less than 24 hours after the announcement of this
27:37partnership. Nintendo just pulls out. They're ditching Sony. And instead, they partner with
27:43Philips. It is an incredibly messy breakup.
27:49Kutaragi goes back to Japan. Not the tail between his legs, though. He's not defeated. He's like,
27:53I'm going to continue to develop this thing. And he goes on to create a gaming system that becomes known
27:59as the PlayStation.
28:02And Nintendo's doing the Super Nintendo. And this really becomes the beginning of the console wars
28:09that play out over the next decade. And so here you have this line in the sand that divides gamers.
28:16Are you team Nintendo? Are you team PlayStation?
28:20So Nintendo and Sony part ways, but that leaves one big question. Who's going to walk away with the only
28:27Nintendo PlayStation ever made? So this doomed prototype ends up in the hands of the president
28:35of Sony Computer Entertainment. That president leaves Sony and goes and works at Advanta for a while
28:42before he ultimately moves on to Time Warner. But when he leaves, he leaves some stuff behind,
28:48including this strange Sony-Nintendo hybrid console in the Advanta offices,
28:55which is how it ended up in the clearance sale when they filed for bankruptcy.
29:01It's not until 2015 that Terry's son Dan finally uncovers what's been hiding in his dad's attic for
29:09decades. Dan is reading a Reddit post online about the collaborative effort between Sony and Nintendo.
29:17And as he's reading the Reddit post, he sees a picture of the machine and he's thinking to himself,
29:20you know what? Dad, this sounds like exactly the thing we have sitting up in the attic.
29:26And at that point, Terry realizes, hang on a second. I think I may have something here.
29:35This console is revealed to the world and gamers essentially just lose their minds over it.
29:44When it goes to auction in 2020, this relic of a failed partnership sells for $360,000,
29:53which just goes to show if you keep your eyes peeled and trust your gut, this can happen to anyone.
30:03We have liftoff with Apollo 14.
30:06For around $280,000, you could have bought part of the NASA guidance computer that helped put a man on
30:14the moon. But how much would you pay for the Hollywood computer programmed to bring the most terrifying
30:20alien to ever hit the big screen back to Earth?
30:30So it's the mid-'80s, and there's this old building in Orange County, California,
30:34that has kind of reached the end of its life, and it needs to be demolished.
30:39Thing is, though, sometimes it's what's inside that counts.
30:44This building has been used like an old storehouse, a junk room, if you will, for 20th Century Fox.
30:50Sets that were no longer being used, pieces of scenery, props. But a bit before the bulldozers
30:56arrive and they start tearing down the building, there's a call that goes out to anybody in the
30:59area that if you're interested in wanting to save any of the stuff that's inside, come by the building,
31:05grab what you want. No money required.
31:10Now, one of the people who shows up is Roberta Brubacher, and she steps in, she looks around,
31:17and almost immediately she comes across something that is one of the most iconic pieces of sci-fi
31:25movie history in existence.
31:29It's a giant piece. It's six feet wide, three and a half feet tall.
31:34It's got this swivel chair and this electronic panel that's supposed to have all these lights.
31:39None of the lights are working at this point.
31:41Roberta says, I want that. I don't know how I'm going to get it out of here. It's massive,
31:46but I'm going to get it. I saw this on screen, and now I own it for nothing.
31:55It's a bit crusty and in pretty rough shape, but she recognizes it for what it is.
32:02It's the mother computer from Ridley Scott's film Alien.
32:07If you've never seen this movie, it is terrifying.
32:13Alien is a masterpiece. It's one of the greatest movies ever made.
32:17And I hate to spoil it for you, but the basic idea is there's an alien.
32:23This awful looking alien that's known as Xenomorph opens its mouth and the little alien comes out of the
32:29mouth. The scene where John Hurt is lying on the table and he's writhing in agony and then his stomach
32:34just bursts open and this tiny little Xenomorph comes popping out of it. We've all seen it.
32:38It's a part of pop culture life.
32:46So the mother computer in the film is really a character in the film. It's this AI computer
32:51built by and run by the company.
32:54And it has to execute special order 937. The alien has to be brought back to Earth
33:01for study, regardless if that means that the crew aboard the ship has to die.
33:06This is the computer that tells Sigourney Weaver that she's expendable. And so the real enemy
33:13in Alien is mother. It's this computer. It's actually a worse antagonist than the Xenomorphs.
33:21This is the big bad from that movie. This is huge.
33:27Ridley Scott's classic space horror premieres on May 25th, 1979, and it is an instant sensation.
33:35So this computer is shipped to Groman's Egyptian theater as part of the opening night festivities,
33:40right? The pieces of the set and get the whole cast there and all this. It's very immersive.
33:44But not long after a lot of it actually ends up getting set on fire.
33:50There's some vandalism that happens. And when no one really knows the story
33:54of who torched them, although there's rumors there was some radical religious group
33:59who thinks the movie itself is demonic or satanic.
34:03And the pieces that are salvaged, including mother, end up getting put in storage.
34:07And this building in California that's about to be demolished is where they end up.
34:14Now, Roberta hangs on to this thing and she takes care of it, but she doesn't fix it up.
34:18So it's pretty battered as it is. And when 2006 rolls around, it goes up to auction in its current
34:25condition.
34:27It sits for another 10 years until the owner finally decides to fix it up and put it back on
34:33the movie memorabilia market. The metal is deoxidized. The wood is sanded and it's repainted.
34:41All the circuitry is added back to the mother computer so that all the lights are starting
34:47to light up. All the circuitry, all the electronics work again. The swivel chair works again.
34:51And years later in 2024, the mother computer makes its way back into headlines as now a fully
34:59working mother computer goes back on auction.
35:02And even though this film prop is too big for your average living room, the mother of all computers
35:09sells for more than $35,000.
35:17People collect for all kinds of reasons. Me, I'm a romantic. I'm in it for the stories and the history
35:23behind the pieces. Some collectors are in it for the art of the deal and the numbers behind it. Like
35:28the
35:28guy who sold a sealed copy of Super Mario 64, still in its plastic wrapping for $1.5 million,
35:36making it the most expensive video game ever sold at auction. And then there's guys like Neil
35:42Hernandez, who's in it for the thrill of the chase and the love of the game.
35:49Picture a summer day in Florida. The beaches are packed.
35:53Everyone is out enjoying the beautiful weather, but not Neil.
35:59Guy's a gamer. Gamers thrive indoors. He's also an avid collector of classic arcade games.
36:07Neil Hernandez has just started his brand new business to turn his passion into his career. He
36:13wants to refurbish and rebuild old arcade video games. And one day, Neil is looking around on the
36:21internet as he does, looking at, you know, Craigslist, places where he might find one of these great old
36:26cabinet games. And he sees a listing that catches his eye. And the description is pretty vague.
36:35It says, my grandfather's arcade game needs motherboard. Great condition, $975.
36:47But Neil knows exactly what he's looking at. And he is very excited. And if it is what he thinks
36:55it is,
36:56it is one of the holy grails of the arcade and gaming collector's universe. The game in question is
37:06called Asterac. And it is an origin point of many, many, many gaming innovations to come.
37:17More than 30 years earlier, Centuri was a little company with big dreams, hoping to ride the arcade
37:24wave and take on giants like Atari. And to help them do that, they hire a hotshot programmer named Tim
37:32Stryker.
37:36Wizkid of an engineer, like ahead of his time.
37:40In the early 1980s, arcade games were everything. And whenever a new game came out, that was the
37:47center attraction in the arcade. So Tim creates Asterac. And Asterac's actually really innovative.
37:54It has these vector visuals. It's got beautiful colors. It's doing stuff that other gaming arcade
38:00systems were not doing. But the difference between Asterac and Space Invaders Galaga,
38:06your ship is only pointed up in one direction and you just get the little boop, boop, boop, boop.
38:11Asterac was also a space game, but it had the ability to turn the spaceship, to turn the guns.
38:19It was sort of stunning compared to what else was out at that time. Unfortunately,
38:24it just doesn't catch on. They can't market it. They can't get it in front of people. And it doesn't
38:31sell. In fact, they only end up making around 200 of them and they all just kind of disappear.
38:43Frustrated with this experience of pouring his genius into this failed system,
38:49Tim Stryker leaves the company, but he is really a visionary genius. And he goes on to do work that
38:56helps build the modern foundation of the internet. As for Asterac, it basically disappears from view.
39:03Until Neil sees the ad online.
39:07So Neil jumps into his truck, drives off to the location to get his hands on this game. Now,
39:12when he gets there, it turns out that there's somebody else that's also making a bid.
39:16But the guy trying to buy it just wants it for the case, like is going to gut the whole
39:23thing.
39:23Like he just wants it as decor.
39:25So Neil literally elbows this dude out the way, strikes a deal right there on the spot,
39:31gets the cab in full, puts it on his truck, takes it away.
39:36So he gets it home and he opens it up and it needs work.
39:40This isn't just a minor restoration job. This is a daunting challenge that Neil has. And so he
39:47doesn't really know a whole lot about it because he really just got started in the restoration game.
39:51But he goes and he looks and he sees something very strange.
39:55He looks at the coin meter and he sees the number zero zero zero zero zero one.
40:04And he looks inside that bucket. There's one quarter dated from 1983, which means
40:12this particular cabinet, Asterac, was only played one time.
40:17And then even more incredible, he finds the receipt. This machine was sent to Tim Stryker,
40:27the visionary creative genius who designed the entire system.
40:31This was Stryker's cabinet. He put one quarter in.
40:36He played one time, probably just to see if the game worked, and then never touched it again.
40:43Over time, years even, Neil went out and recruited different specialists,
40:48not just to get it back in working order, but to get it to the condition that Tim Stryker knew
40:54it in.
40:57After years of hard work and thousands of dollars on restoration,
41:01the estimated value of Tim Stryker's personal Asterac game is $100,000. But currently,
41:08there are no plans to put it up for auction. Imagine how proud Tim Stryker would be knowing
41:15that people are finally playing his game, which just goes to show whether it's a one of a kind video
41:21game, a little blue box, or a lovable robot, if it's weirdly wired, there's money to be made.
41:38In the first place, you can do what you liked.
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