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History's Greatest Picks with Mike Wolfe Season 1 Episode 3
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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, one of the most iconic
00:59pieces of sci-fi movie history in existence. And home gaming began, not with a bang, but
01:06with a pawn. This plastic black and white console would usher in a pop culture revolution. So
01:15let'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
02:01garage.
02:08Alan Alcorn's wife, as wives will tend to do from time to time, issues her husband an ultimatum.
02:14Either you go out and clean up the garage, all that stuff and all that clutter, or everything in
02:21there is going straight into the trash. Now, the thing you have to know about this guy is that he's
02:25an
02:25engineer. And he is somebody that is all about putting things together and seeing how they work.
02:31Circuitry, electronics, electronic equipment. So he's going through the garage and he comes to this box
02:37and he lifts the lid and it just takes him back.
02:43It's very simple. It's black and white with two dials and a red button in the middle.
02:49It doesn't look like much. It's very unassuming. But this plastic black and white console would usher in
02:56a pop culture revolution.
03:02It all starts in 1972 with a little black and white console and a scrappy startup with a big idea.
03:10Their name, Atari.
03:13Atari gives Alcorn a specific task.
03:16We want you to create an electronic version of table tennis.
03:22And 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.
03:34He starts soldering wires to the 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.
03:47And he gets a couple of controllers.
03:48He 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.
04:00And you're trying to get it past your opponent.
04:03Bing.
04:04Boom.
04:05So they take this prototype version of Pong and they put it in a bar.
04:09Andy Capp's Pub in Sunnyvale.
04:12Several days later, they got a phone call from the bar owner.
04:15Hey man, you got to come down here and fix this.
04:17It's broken.
04:18What do you mean it's broken?
04:19It's all hardwired.
04:19I soldered it and what had 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 outside the
04:36bar at 10 o'clock in the morning, loose chains just filling all of their pockets in the hopes that
04:42they can get their round in.
04:44And 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 and arcades around America
04:54and they're all doing gangbusters.
04:57This thing has taken the nation by storm.
04:59Atari sees the significance of just how popular the game is in arcades and they say to themselves, this is
05:06awesome.
05:06But what if we could take the 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 want to buy a cabinet to
05:18put in their living room next to the TV just so they can play Pong.
05:21So Alcorn and his team are like, okay, they take all the circuitry of the arcade game and they compress
05:28it into one single chip.
05:31They then create this black and white plastic console, put the chip inside the console.
05:39They also add a very small speaker.
05:42Because Pong's not just something you watch on the screen.
05:45It makes noises.
05:47It's visceral when you play it.
05:49Everybody knows that sound.
05:51Boop, boop, boop.
05:52It becomes synonymous with the game.
05:55That sound basically brings Pong to life.
05:57If you have no sound, the game is just...
06:01lifeless.
06:02So Atari manages to make a prototype of this home version.
06:08Sears, which is one of the biggest retailers in America at the time, catches wind of it.
06:12And they put in an order for $200,000 for that Christmas.
06:17And by Christmas, 1975, Pong and the Atari home gaming system is in stores for $98.95.
06:26And it sells like wildfire.
06:30America is completely changed that Christmas.
06:33The home video game system now exists.
06:38I remember the one guy in the neighborhood that had Atari.
06:42At the time, you're like, he must be rich.
06:43He has video games at home.
06:45It was a game changer.
06:47Pun 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 it up for auction.
07:03After 35 bids, the legendary piece of gaming history, which originally retailed for only $98.95, sells for $270,000.
07:14And 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 making one.
07:28They are the real-life cues.
07:31The inventors working in secrecy, building tools stranger than fiction.
07:36Like the KGB umbrella with a poison tip that sold for more than $19,000.
07:42Or the suicide tooth that sold for more than $7,000.
07:47And then there's the typewriter that doesn't type at all.
07:59A guy is rummaging through a flea market in Bucharest, Romania.
08:02And if you're a treasure hunter, there'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.
08:24I think what all this adds up to is that it's going to have some of the best flea markets
08:28in the world.
08:28They might have things left over from World War II.
08:30They might have interesting artifacts left over from the Cold War.
08:33So, it pays to keep your eyes open.
08:37And this one guy, he'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.
08:47And he opens it up and he says, oh, it's just an old typewriter.
08:54But here's the thing.
08:55This guy was no ordinary customer.
08:57And he knew that this was not actually an old typewriter.
09:02Yes, it's got a keyboard, but it's got lights, it's got rotors, it's got a plug board.
09:07This guy was a mathematician, and more importantly, he had also served as a cryptographer.
09:13So, this man was a codebreaker.
09:14And when he looked at this old typewriter, he realized, that's not an old typewriter.
09:19That's an Enigma machine.
09:24These are immensely valuable because they played such a pivotal role in World War II.
09:30He knows exactly what he's looking at.
09:34The price tag, 100 euros, or about 113 bucks.
09:39An unbelievable price for one of the most famous encrypting devices in history.
09:47When the war starts, the German military makes extensive use of it.
09:52It's the primary tool for providing operational security protection for broadcast messages
09:59from all branches of the German military.
10:03The Enigma machine operates through a plug board, a series of rotors,
10:08that allows a plain text message to be encoded into alphabet soup gobbledygook.
10:16So, they're sending a bunch of scrambled letters that make no sense,
10:21except for the people on the other end who have a corresponding machine set to the same settings.
10:29But the big mystery is, how did a top-secret German Enigma machine
10:33find its way to a Romanian flea market decades after the war?
10:40The Romanians fought with Nazi Germany during the opening years of the Second World War.
10:46That means that Romanian ground combat units serving alongside the Wehrmacht,
10:52they would have been issued the same Enigma machine that German units are using.
10:57The Germans manufactured over 20,000 of these machines,
11:01but today there are very few in perfect working condition.
11:05So, now that the math professor has the Enigma machine, he decides to clean it up.
11:10He looks for original parts and finds them,
11:12and 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,
11:24pocketing $51,000.
11:27That's one heck of a return on your investment.
11:30But not nearly as impressive as Mark Twain's real typewriter,
11:34which sold for $106,000.
11:41When it comes to movie props, sci-fi tech can bring in serious money.
11:46One collector wanted Darth Vader's helmet and armor so badly
11:50that he paid over a million bucks for it,
11:53while the X-Wing starfighter was sold to another guy for more than $3 million.
12:00But there's one piece of sci-fi history with an even bigger price tag.
12:04He literally defined what movie robots would look like for a generation.
12:09And 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,
12:19oh, that was a big deal.
12:20Oh, look at that.
12:21That was a big deal.
12:22But every once in a while, there is an auction that everyone has their eyes on
12:26in the weeks leading up.
12:27And this is that.
12:33On the back lot of MGM,
12:35they are having one of the all-time memorabilia bonanzas.
12:4140 years of memorabilia.
12:44From seven sound stages, more than 350,000 items all went up in the same auction.
12:50For collectors, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance.
12:53Everything from Ben-Hur to The Wizard of Oz was up for grabs.
12:59For movie lovers, this was as good as it gets.
13:02Now, one guy who loves movies and who is there is William Malone.
13:07And there's one in particular that he's obsessed with,
13:10and that is the movie Forbidden Planet.
13:13Forbidden Planet is a movie from 1956,
13:15and it's got lots of human stars.
13:17But the real star of that movie is Robbie the Robot.
13:23It looked great, big glass dome with lights and gears and moving parts.
13:28It just looked like a real robot, the way you would imagine one to look.
13:33Previously, there had been other robots in movies,
13:35but they were these kind of lumbering tin cans,
13:38sort of giant metal cylinder type things.
13:41At the time, Robbie the Robot cost about $100,000 to build.
13:46That's over a million dollars in today's money.
13:48That, I think, was 7% of the entire film's budget
13:51was spent on this Robbie the Robot prop.
13:55When William is a kid, and he goes and he sees this movie,
13:59The Forbidden Planet, it's not like anything he's seen before.
14:02And the whole thing just completely blows his mind.
14:04He really becomes sort of obsessed with this film
14:08and owning a piece of its history.
14:1214 years after the release of Forbidden Planet,
14:15William Malone, now all grown up,
14:18goes to the auction with the hope of taking home a piece of movie history,
14:23maybe even Robbie himself.
14:27Unfortunately, he is not even close to being able to afford
14:30some 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
14:40these movie studios actually do get rid of things,
14:43he decides to stay persistent.
14:45So he keeps kind of contacting the studio and saying,
14:47Hey, you know, what are you doing with Robbie?
14:49Are you keeping it? Are you selling it?
14:51Are you selling it to me? When can I have it?
14:53Give me the robot.
14:54So William is pestering to find out what's going on with Robbie
14:57when he learns that actually,
14:59Robbie the Robot has already been sold.
15:01And sadly, not to him.
15:04Now, the person who bought Robbie the Robot is a guy named Jim Brooker.
15:08He's got this big place called Movie World, Cars of the Stars.
15:13That's where Robbie the Robot sits, is in this place.
15:17And Robbie's not being properly taken care of.
15:20This museum is open to the public.
15:22And you can imagine, teenagers in the 70s,
15:25these prompts, including Robbie the Robot,
15:27you can actually reach right out and touch them.
15:30And over the years, he really falls into a state of disrepair.
15:35The thing about William alone is, he's obsessed.
15:37And he really wants to have that robot.
15:40He can't have the real thing, so he's going to do the next best thing,
15:43which is to build one of his own.
15:44And when he's done, he's got to Robbie the Robot
15:47that looks pretty darn good.
15:49In fact, it 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
16:01and all its props are up for sale.
16:05And he knows that this is his chance.
16:08So he goes and he shows up, hands over $10,000, and takes Robbie.
16:14So William alone finally gets to start work
16:18on what he's been wanting to do for decades,
16:20which is to restore that robot to its former glory.
16:23Here's the best part.
16:24When he paid $10,000 for Robbie the Robot,
16:27it came with the original shipping containers.
16:30And those original shipping containers also have replacement parts.
16:35Replacement parts that have never been used.
16:37So 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.
16:48And he's got everything he needs to do the work.
16:50Now, two of the details that he wanted to get just right
16:53are the hands and that iconic glass dome that goes over the head.
16:57And he's able to do it.
16:59The hands look perfect.
17:00And he's able to cast that dome from the original mold that it came with.
17:05He gets every knob, every bell and whistle to look exactly the way it needs to.
17:11And so instead of, like, turning it around and trying to sell it to somebody
17:14or putting it on display for other people to look at,
17:17he enjoys it himself.
17:20He puts this robot in his home and he lives with Robbie for 37 years.
17:25In fact, he even makes a routine of having coffee with Robbie in the kitchen every morning.
17:33As collectors, we're all just caretakers of these things.
17:37So eventually, William comes around and he decides to put Robbie back out into the world.
17:43In November of 2017, he goes up for auction.
17:48Robbie, who was originally bought for 10 grand,
17:50now sells for an out-of-this-world price of 5.3 million bucks,
17:55which is a record for a movie prop.
18:02Celebrity always sells, no matter the item.
18:06And the tech world is no exception.
18:08Take Steve Jobs.
18:09One of his old job applications, written as a teenager,
18:13sold at auction for a remarkable $175,000.
18:19His old Birkenstocks?
18:21Yeah, the ones he actually wore?
18:23In 2022, a collector shelled out more than 218 grand.
18:28But the real story and the real money
18:31starts with the first piece of primitive-looking tech he ever sold,
18:35something no one could have imagined
18:37would kickstart a global tech revolution.
18:49Two guys are going room to room through the dorms,
18:52making some deals.
18:54One is a student, and the other is a dropout.
18:57And they meet this dude named Bill Claxton.
19:01They're going to sell him something for $150.
19:03And what is sold is illegal, but it's not drugs.
19:08It was small, like four inches by three inches.
19:12It had a few buttons on the top.
19:14It's got embedded circuitry.
19:16It's powered internally by a nine-volt battery.
19:20These two dorm hustlers that are selling this illegal contraband,
19:24they are no other than Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
19:30They were selling this thing called a blue box,
19:32and it was used for a phenomenon known as phone freaking.
19:37Not freaking with an F, freaking with a PH.
19:40A kid in the 1950s discovered that if he whistled at exactly 2,600 hertz,
19:48it mimicked the internal mechanism that phone companies used to communicate between devices.
19:55By whistling into the phone, he could hack the phone system and actually make phone calls.
20:03In particular, he could make free long-distance phone calls,
20:07which are otherwise pretty darn expensive.
20:10But to whistle at exactly 2,600 hertz, you need absolute perfect pitch.
20:15Luckily, Captain Crunch issued a souvenir giveaway whistle that hit exactly 2,600 hertz.
20:25The secret's out, and an underground network of geeks and nerds
20:30and people with tech proclivities start building so-called blue boxes.
20:35In October of 1971, Steve Wozniak reads an article in Esquire magazine
20:42about these phone freakers called The Secrets of the Blue Box,
20:46and 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,
20:55we'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.
21:05It's a really simple little device.
21:08But technologically speaking, it was a game-changer.
21:13Everything else up to this point has been analog.
21:16This thing is a computer.
21:18It's phone-freaking digitally.
21:22So Jobs and Wozniak have this thing built.
21:25They need to prove that it works.
21:26And so they do a test call.
21:27They're big thinkers.
21:28So instead of just making a call to a random person somewhere in Japan,
21:31they decide to pretend to be Henry Kissinger and to call the Pope.
21:37And the call gets put through.
21:39The 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.
21:52This is where Steve Jobs enters as entrepreneur.
21:54Steve and Steve made a great team
21:56because 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,
22:08you miss your family.
22:09What if I told you that here I have a device
22:13that could allow you to call anywhere in the world for free?
22:18Romania, Bulgaria, China, Japan.
22:22Customers are enthralled and eagerly pull out their wallets.
22:26One of the people they sell to is Bill Claxton.
22:29Him and his brother, they live 300 miles apart.
22:31So now they can talk all they want every day.
22:34And 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.
22:45And the Lennon-McCartney of the computer world is born.
22:51Steve Wozniak, now, with Steve Jobs' partners,
22:55and they go on to invent the Apple One.
22:58And it's the start of the home computer revolution.
23:02Steve Jobs has said this himself.
23:04If there had been no blue box,
23:06there would be no Apple.
23:08And that means there would be no iPhone.
23:10And that means we would live in a very different world.
23:16That same blue box bought by Bill Claxton in 1972 for $150
23:21goes up for auction 45 years later
23:25and sells for $125,000.
23:29But in 2023, an unopened first-generation iPhone
23:33found in a drawer, still sealed in plastic,
23:36sold at an auction for an astonishing $190,000.
23:47Some rivalries are legendary.
23:50Coca-Cola versus Pepsi, McDonald's versus Burger King.
23:54And then there's a rivalry between Sony and Nintendo.
23:57But this one didn't begin as competition.
24:00It began as collaboration.
24:02And it's a story that might have been forgotten
24:04if it hadn't been for a chance find at a clearance sale.
24:14We're in the middle of the financial crisis
24:17and companies are falling like nine pins.
24:19And this includes the Advanta Corporation,
24:22which is filing for bankruptcy.
24:25They are out of money.
24:26So they have to get rid of and sell off everything.
24:31At Advanta, there's an employee by the name of Terry Dybold.
24:34He is responsible for helping to clean out the office,
24:38to sort and to organize things like all the furniture,
24:41boxes of random items.
24:43He's also organizing some of the dishware,
24:46very fine china, very fine silverware
24:48that was primarily used by executives.
24:51And so he thinks, OK, when this lot number goes up,
24:55I'm going to bid on it.
24:56It'll get a great deal.
24:58When the day of auction comes, those boxes come up.
25:03He raises his paddle and he wins the lot.
25:06And he pays $75.
25:08And they say, the lot is all yours.
25:11And then he sees what the lot actually is.
25:14And it's more than he was bargaining for.
25:16It's so much stuff that Terry has to do two trips in the car
25:21to take all these boxes back to his house.
25:25When he gets home, he opens up all these boxes.
25:28And yeah, the dishware's there, the silverware's there.
25:30Well done.
25:31But inside are also hundreds of music CDs
25:36and neckties and plaques and shoes.
25:41And 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.
25:58But then you also have an area where CD-ROM can be put in there.
26:03You've also got a control pad.
26:05So you've got the D-pad.
26:07And then he notices that it's labeled both Sony
26:10and 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.
26:22So he does what most of us do.
26:24He puts it away.
26:25He stores it in the attic and forgets about it.
26:28If only Terry knew what he was holding in his hands.
26:33Although Terry might not know it,
26:35this mysterious one-of-a-kind console
26:38found in a random box at a bankruptcy sale
26:41has one heck of a story to tell.
26:44A story that begins in 1991
26:47at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.
26:51You have a Sony engineer there by the name of Ken Kutaragi
26:54who is ready to display a brand new prototype
26:58that he's been working on.
26:59He unveiled this revolutionary partnership
27:03between Nintendo and Sony.
27:06Now, they had this brand new console
27:09that they created together
27:10that could play Nintendo games
27:13and run Sony software.
27:15It combines all kinds of different stuff.
27:19A cartridge, a CD-ROM.
27:21This is a marriage made in gaming heaven.
27:27Some marriages are meant to last forever.
27:29Some marriages end before they even get to the altar.
27:33Only 24 hours, less than 24 hours
27:36after the announcement of this partnership,
27:39Nintendo just pulls out.
27:40They're ditching Sony.
27:41And instead, they partner with Philips.
27:44It is an incredibly messy breakup.
27:49Kutaragi goes back to Japan.
27:51Not the tail between his legs, though.
27:53He's not defeated.
27:53He's like, I'm gonna continue to develop this thing.
27:55And he goes on to create a gaming system
27:58that becomes known as the PlayStation.
28:02And Nintendo's doing the Super Nintendo.
28:04And this really becomes the beginning
28:07of the console lores that play out over the next decade.
28:12And so here you have this line in the sand
28:15that divides gamers.
28:16Are you Team Nintendo?
28:17Are you Team PlayStation?
28:20So Nintendo and Sony part ways.
28:23But that leaves one big question.
28:25Who's going to walk away
28:26with the only Nintendo PlayStation ever made?
28:30So this doomed prototype
28:33ends up in the hands of the president
28:35of Sony Computer Entertainment.
28:37That president leaves Sony
28:39and goes and works at Advanta for a while
28:42before he ultimately moves on to Time Warner.
28:44But when he leaves,
28:46he leaves some stuff behind,
28:48including this strange Sony-Nintendo hybrid console
28:53in the Advanta offices,
28:55which is how it ended up in the clearance sale
28:58when they filed for bankruptcy.
29:01It's not until 2015
29:03that Terry's son Dan
29:05finally uncovers what's been hiding
29:07in his dad's attic for decades.
29:10Dan is reading a Reddit post online
29:14about the collaborative effort
29:15between Sony and Nintendo.
29:17And as he's reading the Reddit post,
29:18he sees a picture of the machine
29:20and he's thinking to himself,
29:21you know what?
29:21Dad, this sounds like exactly the thing
29:24we have sitting up in the attic.
29:26And at that point,
29:27Terry realizes,
29:29hang on a second.
29:31I think I may have something here.
29:35This console is revealed to the world
29:38and gamers essentially just lose their minds over it.
29:44When it goes to auction in 2020,
29:47this relic of a failed partnership
29:49sells for $360,000,
29:53which just goes to show
29:55if you keep your eyes peeled,
29:56and trust your gut,
29:58this can happen to anyone.
30:03We have liftoff with Apollo 14.
30:06For around $280,000,
30:09you could have bought part of the NASA guidance computer
30:12that helped put a man on the moon.
30:14But how much would you pay
30:16for the Hollywood computer
30:17programmed to bring the most terrifying alien
30:20to ever hit the big screen?
30:22Back to her.
30:23Back to her.
30:25Back to her.
30:28Back to her.
30:30So it's the mid-'80s,
30:31and there's this old building
30:33in Orange County, California
30:34that has kind of reached the end of its life,
30:37and it needs to be demolished.
30:39Thing is, though,
30:40sometimes it's what's inside that counts.
30:44This building has been used
30:46like an old storehouse,
30:47a junk room, if you will,
30:48for 20th Century Fox.
30:50Sets that were no longer being used,
30:52pieces of scenery, props.
30:54But a bit before the bulldozers arrive
30:57and they start tearing down the building,
30:58there's a call that goes out
30:59to anybody in the area
31:00that if you're interested
31:01in wanting to save
31:02any of the stuff that's inside,
31:04come by the building,
31:05grab what you want.
31:07No money required.
31:10Now, one of the people who shows up
31:12is Roberta Brubacher,
31:13and she steps in,
31:15she looks around,
31:17and almost immediately,
31:19she comes across something
31:20that is one of the most iconic pieces
31:23of sci-fi movie history in existence.
31:29It's a giant piece.
31:31It's six feet wide,
31:32three and a half feet tall.
31:34It's got a swivel chair
31:35and this electronic panel
31:37that's supposed to have
31:38all these lights.
31:39None of the lights are working
31:40at this point.
31:41Roberta says,
31:43I want that.
31:43I don't know how I'm going
31:44to get it out of here.
31:45It's massive,
31:46but I'm going to get it.
31:47I saw this on screen,
31:49and now I own it
31:53for nothing.
31:55It's a bit crusty
31:57and in pretty rough shape,
31:58but she recognizes it
32:00for what it is.
32:02The mother computer
32:03from Ridley Scott's film Alien.
32:07If you've never seen this movie,
32:09it is terrifying.
32:13Alien is a masterpiece.
32:15It's one of the greatest movies ever made,
32:17and I hate to spoil it for you,
32:19but the basic idea is
32:20there's an alien.
32:22This awful-looking alien
32:25that's known as a xenomorph
32:27opens its mouth
32:27and the little alien
32:28comes out of the mouth.
32:30The scene where John Hurt
32:31is lying on the table
32:33and he's writhing in agony
32:34and then his stomach
32:34just bursts open
32:35and this tiny little xenomorph
32:37comes popping out of it.
32:38We've all seen it.
32:39It's a part of pop culture life.
32:46So the mother computer
32:47in the film
32:48is really a character
32:49in the film.
32:50It's this AI computer
32:51built by
32:52and run by
32:53the company.
32:54and it has to execute
32:56Special Order 937.
32:58The alien has to be brought back
33:01to Earth for study,
33:02regardless if that means
33:03that the crew
33:04aboard the ship
33:05has to die.
33:06This is the computer
33:08that tells Sigourney Weaver
33:10that she's expendable.
33:11And so the real enemy
33:13in Alien
33:13is Mother.
33:15It's this computer.
33:16It's actually
33:17a worse antagonist
33:19than the xenomorphs.
33:21This is the big bad
33:22from that movie.
33:24This is huge.
33:27Ridley Scott's
33:28classic space horror
33:29premieres on May 25th, 1979
33:32and it is
33:33an instant sensation.
33:35So this computer
33:36is shipped
33:36to Groman's Egyptian Theater
33:38as part of the
33:39opening night festivities,
33:40right?
33:41The pieces of the set
33:42and get the whole cast there
33:43and all this.
33:43It's very immersive.
33:44But not long after
33:47a lot of it actually
33:48ends up getting set on fire.
33:50There's some vandalism
33:51that happens
33:52and no one really knows
33:53the story
33:54of who torched them.
33:55Although there's rumors
33:57there was some radical
33:58religious group
33:59who thinks
34:00the movie itself
34:01is demonic
34:02or satanic.
34:03And the pieces
34:04that are salvaged,
34:05including Mother,
34:06end up getting put
34:07in storage.
34:07And this building
34:09in California
34:10that's about to be demolished
34:11is where they end up.
34:14Now Roberta hangs on
34:15to this thing
34:16and she takes care of it
34:17but she doesn't fix it up.
34:18So it's pretty battered
34:20as it is.
34:21And when 2006 rolls around,
34:23it goes up to auction
34:24in its current condition.
34:27It sits for another 10 years
34:29until the owner
34:30finally decides
34:31to fix it up
34:32and put it back
34:33back on the movie
34:34memorabilia market.
34:35The metal is deoxidized,
34:38the wood is sanded
34:39and it's repainted.
34:41All the circuitry
34:43is added back
34:43to the Mother Computer
34:45so that all the lights
34:47are starting to light up,
34:48all the circuitry,
34:49all the electronics
34:49work again,
34:50the swivel chair works again.
34:51And years later,
34:53in 2024,
34:55the Mother Computer
34:55makes its way
34:56back into headlines
34:57as now a fully working
34:59Mother Computer
35:00goes back on auction.
35:02And even though
35:03this film prop
35:04is too big
35:05for your average living room,
35:07the Mother of all computers
35:09sells for more than $35,000.
35:16People collect
35:18for all kinds of reasons.
35:19Me, I'm a romantic.
35:21I'm in it for the stories
35:22and the history
35:23behind the pieces.
35:24Some collectors
35:25are in it
35:26for the art of the deal
35:26and the numbers behind it.
35:28Like the guy
35:29who sold the sealed copy
35:30of Super Mario 64
35:32still in its plastic wrapping
35:33for $1.5 million.
35:36Making it
35:37the most expensive video game
35:39ever sold at auction.
35:40And then there's guys
35:41like Neil Hernandez
35:42who's in it
35:43for the thrill of the chase
35:44and the love of the game.
35:49Picture a summer day
35:50in Florida.
35:51The beaches are packed.
35:53Everyone is out
35:54enjoying the beautiful weather.
35:57But not Neil.
35:59Guy's a gamer.
36:00Gamers thrive indoors.
36:02He's also an avid collector
36:04of classic arcade games.
36:07Neil Hernandez
36:08has just started
36:09his brand new business
36:10to turn his passion
36:11into his career.
36:13He wants to refurbish
36:14and rebuild
36:15old arcade video games.
36:17And one day,
36:19Neil is looking around
36:21on the internet
36:21as he does,
36:22looking at, you know,
36:23Craigslist,
36:23places where he might find
36:24one of these
36:25great old cabinet games.
36:27And he sees a listing
36:29that catches his eye.
36:31And the description
36:32is pretty vague.
36:34It says,
36:37my grandfather's arcade game
36:39needs motherboard,
36:42great condition,
36:44$975.
36:47But Neil knows exactly
36:49what he's looking at
36:50and he is very excited.
36:53And if it is
36:54what he thinks it is,
36:56it is one of the holy grails
36:59of the arcade
37:01and gaming collector's universe.
37:04The game in question
37:05is called Asterac.
37:07And it is an origin point
37:10of many, many, many
37:12gaming innovations to come.
37:17More than 30 years earlier,
37:20Centuri was a little company
37:21with big dreams,
37:23hoping to ride the arcade wave
37:25and take on giants like Atari.
37:27And to help them do that,
37:29they hire a hotshot programmer
37:31named Tim Stryker.
37:36Wizkid of an engineer,
37:37like ahead of his time.
37:40In the early 1980s,
37:42arcade games were everything.
37:44And whenever a new game came out,
37:46that was the center attraction
37:48in the arcade.
37:49So Tim creates Asterac.
37:52And Asterac's actually
37:53really innovative.
37:54It has these vector visuals,
37:56it's got beautiful colors,
37:58it's doing stuff
37:59that other gaming arcade systems
38:01were not doing.
38:03The difference between Asterac
38:04and Space Invaders Galaga,
38:06your ship is only pointed up
38:07in one direction
38:08and you just get the little
38:09boop, boop, boop, boop.
38:11Asterac was also a space game,
38:14but it had the ability
38:15to turn the spaceship,
38:17to turn the guns.
38:19It was sort of stunning
38:20compared to what else
38:21was out at that time.
38:23Unfortunately,
38:24it just doesn't catch on.
38:26They can't market it,
38:28they can't get it in front of people,
38:30and it doesn't sell.
38:32In fact, they only end up making
38:33around 200 of them,
38:36and they all just kind of
38:38disappear.
38:43Frustrated with this experience
38:45of pouring his genius
38:46into this failed system.
38:49Tim Stryker leaves the company,
38:51but he is really
38:53a visionary genius,
38:54and he goes on to do work
38:56that helps build
38:57the modern foundation
38:58of the Internet.
38:59As for Asterac,
39:01it basically disappears
39:02from view
39:03until Neil sees the ad online.
39:07So Neil jumps into his truck,
39:09drives off to the location
39:11to get his hands on this game.
39:12Now, when he gets there,
39:14it turns out that
39:15there's somebody else
39:15that's also making a bid.
39:17But the guy trying to buy it
39:19just wants it for the case.
39:21Like, is going to gut
39:22the whole thing.
39:23Like, he just wants it
39:24as decor.
39:25So Neil literally
39:26elbows this dude
39:28out the way,
39:29strikes a deal
39:29right there on the spot,
39:30gets the cab in full,
39:32puts it on his truck,
39:34takes it away.
39:36So he gets it home,
39:37and he opens it up,
39:38and it needs work.
39:40This isn't just
39:41a minor restoration job.
39:43This is a daunting challenge
39:45that Neil has.
39:46And so he doesn't really know
39:48a whole lot about it
39:48because he really just got started
39:50in the restoration game.
39:51But he goes and he looks,
39:53and he sees something
39:54very strange.
39:56He looks at the coin meter,
39:57and he sees the number
39:59zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, one.
40:03And he looks inside
40:05that bucket.
40:06There's one quarter,
40:08dated from 1983,
40:10which means this particular cabinet,
40:14Asterac, was only played
40:16one time.
40:17And then, even more incredible,
40:20he finds the receipt.
40:23This machine was sent
40:25to Tim Stryker,
40:27the visionary creative genius
40:29who designed the entire system.
40:32This was Stryker's cabinet.
40:34He put one quarter in,
40:36he played one time,
40:38probably just to see
40:39if the game worked,
40:40and then never touched it again.
40:43Over time, years even,
40:45Neil went out
40:46and recruited different specialists,
40:48not just to get it back
40:49in working order,
40:50but to get it to the condition
40:52that Tim Stryker knew it in.
40:57After years of hard work
40:58and thousands of dollars
40:59on restoration,
41:01the estimated value
41:02of Tim Stryker's
41:03personal Asterac game
41:04is $100,000.
41:07But currently,
41:08there are no plans
41:09to put it up for auction.
41:11Imagine how proud
41:13Tim Stryker would be
41:14knowing that people
41:16are finally playing his game,
41:18which just goes to show
41:19whether it's a one-of-a-kind
41:21video game,
41:22a little blue box,
41:23or a lovable robot,
41:25if it's weirdly wired,
41:27there's money to be made.
41:28And then...
41:33...
41:34...
41:35...
41:35...
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