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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 changed everything.
00:36And for those that know where to look, there is serious money to be made in the misfires,
00:42the trial runs, and the weirdly wired. Because there might not have been a smartphone without
00:48a 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.
01:07This 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
01:35will go to extraordinary lengths to preserve them for posterity.
01:39Like the co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, he spent nearly three decades amassing a collection of
01:45groundbreaking tech, which sold at auction in 2024 for more than $16 million.
01:52And then there's the kind of stuff that collectors can only dream about.
01:56Sometimes it's simply hiding inside a cardboard box stacked inside a suburban garage.
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 engineer.
02:26And he is somebody that is all about putting things together and seeing how they work.
02:31Circuitry, electronics, electronic equipment.
02:34So 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
02:52this plastic black and white console would usher in a 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. We 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. 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.
03:47And he gets a couple 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, boom.
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.
04:15Hey man, you got to come down here and fix this. It's broken.
04:18What do you mean it's broken? It's all hardwired. I soldered it.
04:21And what had happened, there were so many quarters.
04:25And the receptacle was jammed full of money.
04:30The reason for this is because Pong becomes so popular at this bar,
04:34that people start lining up outside the bar at 10 o'clock in the morning,
04:39loose chains just filling all of their pockets in the hopes that they 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
04:53around America, and they're all doing gangbusters. This 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,
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,
05:16because people don't want to buy a cabinet to put in their living room next to the TV just so
05:20they can
05:20play Pong. So 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 is not just something you watch on the screen, it makes noises.
05:47It's visceral when you play it. Everybody knows that sound.
05:52It 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.
06:08Sears, which is one of the biggest retailers in America at the time,
06:11catches wind of it and 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. America is completely changed that Christmas. The home video game system
06:36now exists. I remember the one guy in the neighborhood that had Atari. At the time,
06:42you're like, he must be rich. He has video games at home. It was a game changer, pun intended.
06:47And they become this gigantic video game company, Atari, from this prototype.
06:55Nearly 50 years later in 2022, after Alan Alcorn rediscovers his prototype,
07:01he decides to put it up for auction. After 35 bids, the legendary piece of gaming history,
07:07which originally retailed for only $98.95, sells for $270,000. And the wildest part? Apparently,
07:16it still works. For every spy movie that dreamed up a gadget, there was someone out there that was
07:27actually making 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. Or the
07:43suicide tooth that sold for more than $7,000. And then there's the typewriter that doesn't type at 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. It's been conquered,
08:12and reconquered, and taken again by dictators, and Nazis, and communists. Centuries of history,
08:21all in one city. And I think what all this adds up to is that it's going to have some
08:27of
08:27the best flea markets in the world. They might have things left over from World War II. They might
08:31have interesting artifacts left over from the Cold War. So 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. And he opens it up,
08:49and 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
09:01an 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,
09:17that's not an old typewriter. 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.
09:40An 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. It's the primary tool for
09:55providing operational security protection for broadcast messages from all branches of the
10:01German military. The Enigma machine operates through a plug board, a series of rotors that allows
10:09a plain text 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
10:23other 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
10:34find 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, but today there are very few in perfect
11:03working condition. So now that the math professor has the Enigma machine, he decides to clean it up,
11:10he looks for original parts and finds them, and he fully renovates it and turns it back into a working
11:16Enigma machine. After spending $113 to buy it, the professor restores it and puts it up for auction.
11:24In fact, pocketing $51,000. That's one heck of a return on your investment. But not nearly as
11:31impressive as Mark Twain's real typewriter, which sold for $106,000.
11:41When it comes to movie props, sci-fi tech can bring in serious money. One collector wanted
11:48Darth Vader's helmet and armor so badly that 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. He literally defined what
12:06movie robots would look like for a generation. 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,
12:19oh, that was a big deal. Oh, look at that. That was a big deal. But every once in a
12:23while,
12:23there is an auction that everyone has 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
12:56the Wizard of Oz was up for grabs. For movie lovers, this was as good as it gets.
13:03Now, 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.
13:24It 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, but they were these kind of
13:37lumbering tin cans, 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 I think was 7% of the entire film's budget was spent on this Robbie the Robot crop.
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
14:05really becomes sort 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 of things,
14:43he decides to stay persistent. So he keeps kind of contacting the studio and saying,
14:47hey, you know, what are you doing with Robbie?
14:48Are you keeping it? Are you selling it? Are you selling it to me? When can I have it? Give
14:53me the
14:53robot. So William is pestering to find out what's going on with Robbie when he learns that actually,
14:59Robbie 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 called
15:10Movie 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. So in 1979, William hears that Movie World
16:00is closing up shop, and all its props are up for sale. And he knows that this is his chance.
16:08So he goes, and he shows up, hands over $10,000, and takes Robbie.
16:15So William Malone 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. When he paid $10,000
16:26for Robbie the Robot, it came with the original shipping containers. And those original shipping
16:31containers also have replacement parts, replacement parts that have never been used. So he's got
16:38pristine, original pieces he can use to restore that robot. So he goes to work on truly restoring
16:47Robbie the Robot, and he's got everything he needs to do the work. Now, two of the details that he
16:52wanted
16:52to get just right are the hands and that iconic glass dome that goes over the head. And he's able
16:58to do it.
16:59The hands look perfect, and 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. And so,
17:11instead of like turning it around and trying to sell it to somebody, or putting it on display for
17:16other people to look at, he enjoys it himself. He puts this robot in his home and he lives with
17:24Robbie for 37 years. In fact, he even makes a routine of having coffee with Robbie in the kitchen
17:30every morning.
17:34As collectors, we're all just caretakers of these things. So eventually, William comes around and
17:40he decides to put Robbie back out into the world. In November of 2017, he goes up for auction. Robbie,
17:48who was originally bought for 10 grand, now sells for an out-of-this-world price of 5.3 million
17:55bucks,
17:55which is a record for a movie prop.
18:03Celebrity always sells, no matter the item. And the tech world is no exception. Take Steve Jobs.
18:09One of his old job applications, written as a teenager, sold at auction for a remarkable $175,000.
18:19His old Birkenstocks? Yeah, the ones he actually wore? In 2022, a collector shelled out more than
18:26$218,000. But the real story and the real money starts with the first piece of primitive-looking tech
18:34he ever sold. Something no one could have imagined would kickstart a global tech revolution.
18:49Two guys are going room to room through the dorms, making some deals.
18:54One is a student, and the other is a dropout. And they meet this dude named Bill Claxton.
19:00They're going to sell him something for $150. And what is sold is illegal. But it's not drugs.
19:08It 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,
19:24they are no other than Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. They were selling this thing called a blue box,
19:32and it was used for a phenomenon known as phone freaking. Not 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.
19:56By 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, which 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 and
20:30people with tech proclivities start building so-called blue 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 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.
21:16This 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. But it works.
21:51They 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 an event the Apple One. And it's the
22:59start of the home computer revolution.
23:01Steve Jobs has said this himself. If there had been no blue box, there would be no Apple.
23:08And that means there would be no iPhone. And that means we would live in a very different world.
23:16That same blue box bought by Bill Claxton in 1972 for 150 bucks goes up for auction 45 years later
23:25and sells for $125,000.
23:29But in 2023, an unopened first generation iPhone found in a drawer, still sealed in plastic, sold at an auction
23:38for an astonishing $190,000.
23:48Some 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, but it hadn't been for a chance
24:06find at a clearance sale.
24:14We're in the middle of the financial crisis and companies are falling like nine pins.
24:19And this includes the Advanta Corporation, which is falling 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 clean out the
24:38office, 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 primarily used by executives.
24:51And so he thinks, OK, when this lot number goes up, I'm going to bid on it. It'll get a
24:58great deal.
24:59When the day of auction comes, those 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.
25:11And then he sees what the lot actually is. And it's more than he was bargaining for.
25:16It's so much stuff that Terry has to do two trips in the car to take all these boxes back
25:24to his house.
25:25When he gets home, he opens up all these boxes and yeah, the dishware's there, the silverware's there.
25:30Well done. But inside are also hundreds of music CDs and 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. So you've got the D-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.
26:24He puts it away. He stores it in the attic and forgets about it.
26:28If only Terry knew what he was holding in his hands.
26:34Although 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.
26:59He unveiled this revolutionary partnership between Nintendo and Sony.
27:06Now, they had this brand new console that they created together that could play Nintendo games and run Sony software.
27:15It combines all kinds of different stuff. A cartridge, a CD-ROM.
27:21This is a marriage made in gaming heaven.
27:27Some marriages are meant to last forever. Some marriages end before they even get to the altar.
27:33Only 24 hours, less than 24 hours after the announcement of this partnership, Nintendo just pulls out.
27:40They're ditching Sony. And instead, they partner with Philips. It is an incredibly messy breakup.
27:49Kutaragi goes back to Japan. Not the tail between his legs, though. He's not defeated.
27:53He's like, I'm going to continue to develop this thing.
27:55And he goes on to create a gaming system that becomes known as the PlayStation.
28:02And Nintendo's doing the Super Nintendo. And this really becomes the beginning of the console wars that play out over
28:11the next decade.
28:12And so here you have this line in the sand that divides gamers. Are you team Nintendo? Are you team
28:18PlayStation?
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?
28:30So this doomed prototype ends up in the hands of the president of Sony Computer Entertainment.
28:37That president leaves Sony and goes and works at Edmanta for a while before he ultimately moves on to Time
28:44Warner.
28:44But when he leaves, he leaves some stuff behind, including this strange Sony-Nintendo hybrid console in the Edmanta offices,
28:56which 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 decades.
29:10Dan is reading a Reddit post online.
29:14about the collaborative effort between Sony and Nintendo.
29:17And as he's reading the Reddit post, he sees a picture of the machine.
29:20And he's thinking to himself, you know what?
29:21Dad, this sounds like exactly the thing we have sitting up in the attic.
29:26And at that point, Terry realizes, hang on a second.
29:31I 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.
30:07For around $280,000, you could have bought part of the NASA guidance computer that helped put a man on
30:14the moon.
30:15But how much would you pay for the Hollywood computer program to bring the most terrifying alien to ever hit
30:21the big screen back to Earth?
30:30So it's the mid-'80s, and there's this old building in Orange County, California, that has kind of reached the end
30:36of its life.
30:37And 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.
30:54But a bit before the bulldozers arrive and they start tearing down the building, there's a call that goes out
30:59to anybody in the area that,
31:00if you're interested in wanting to save any of the stuff that's inside, come by the building, grab what you
31:05want.
31:06No 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 movie history
31:26in existence.
31:30It'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.
31:42Roberta says, I want that. I don't know how I'm going to get it out of here.
31:45It's massive, but I'm going to get it.
31:47I 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.
32:02The 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 a xenomorph opens its mouth and the little alien comes out of the
32:29mouth.
32:30The scene where John Hurt is lying on the table and he's writhing in agony,
32:34and then his stomach just bursts open and this tiny little xenomorph comes popping out of it.
32:38We've all seen it. It's a part of pop culture life.
32:46So the mother computer in the film is really a character in the film.
32:50It's this AI computer built by and run by the company.
32:54And it has to execute special order 937. The alien has to be brought back to Earth for study,
33:02regardless if that means that the crew aboard the ship has to die.
33:07This is the computer that tells Sigourney Weaver that she's expendable.
33:11And so the real enemy in Alien is mother. It's this computer.
33:17It's actually a worse antagonist than the xenomorphs.
33:21This is the big bad from that movie. This is huge.
33:26Ridley 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,
33:41right? The pieces of the set, you get the whole cast there and all this. It's very immersive.
33:45But not long after, a lot of it actually ends up getting set on fire.
33:50There's some vandalism that happens when no one really knows the story of who torched them,
33:55although there's rumors there was some radical religious group who thinks the movie itself is
34:01demonic or satanic. And the pieces that are salvaged, including mother, end up getting put
34:07in storage. And 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. So
34:19it's
34:19pretty battered as it is. And when 2006 rolls around, it goes up to auction in its current condition.
34:27It sits for another 10 years until the owner finally decides to fix it up and put it back on
34:33the movie
34:34memorabilia market. The metal is deoxidized. The wood is sanded and it's repainted. All the circuitry is
34:43added back to the mother computer so that all the lights are starting to light up. All the circuitry,
34:49all the electronics work again. The swivel chair works again. And years later, in 2024, the mother
34:55computer makes its way back into headlines as now a fully working mother computer goes back on auction.
35:02And even though this film prop is too big for your average living room,
35:07the mother of all computers sells 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.
35:28Like the guy who sold the sealed copy of Super Mario 64 still in its plastic wrapping for $1.5
35:35million, making it the most expensive video game ever sold at auction. And then there's guys like
35:42Neil Hernandez, who's in it for the thrill of the chase and the love of the game.
35:49The picture of summer day in Florida. The beaches are packed. Everyone is out enjoying the beautiful
35:56weather. But not Neil. Guy's a gamer. Gamers thrive indoors. He's also an avid collector of classic
36:05arcade games. Neil Hernandez has just started his brand new business to turn his passion
36:11into his career. He wants to refurbish and rebuild old arcade video games.
36:17And one day, Neil is looking around on the internet as he does, looking at, you know,
36:23Craigslist, places where he might find one of these great old cabinet games. And he sees a listing
36:29that catches his eye. And the description is pretty vague. It says,
36:37my 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 collectors universe.
37:04The game in question is called Asterac. And it is an origin point of many, many, many gaming innovations to
37:14come.
37:17More than 30 years earlier, Centuri was a little company with big dreams, hoping to ride the arcade wave
37:25and take on giants like Atari. And to help them do that, they hire a hotshot programmer named Tim Stryker.
37:35Whiz kid 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 is actually really innovative.
37:54It has these vector visuals. It's got beautiful colors. It's doing stuff that other gaming arcade
38:01systems 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.
38:12Asterac 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.
38:24Unfortunately, it just doesn't catch on. They can't market it. They can't get it in front of people.
38:30And it doesn't sell. In fact, they only end up making around 200 of them. And they all just kind
38:37of disappear.
38:43Frustrated with this experience of pouring his genius into this failed system, Tim Stryker
38:50leaves the company. But he is really a visionary genius. And he goes on to do work that helps
38:57build 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 when
39:13he
39:13gets there, it turns out that there's somebody else that's also making a bid.
39:17But 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 000001. And he looks inside that bucket,
40:06there's one quarter, dated from 1983, which means this particular cabinet, Asterac, was only played
40:16one time.
40:17And then, even more incredible, he finds the receipt.
40:23This machine was sent to Tim Stryker, the visionary creative genius who designed the entire system.
40:32This was Stryker's cabinet. He put one quarter in, he played one time, probably just to see if the game
40:39worked, and then never touched it again. Over time, years even, Neil went out and recruited different
40:47specialists, not just to get it back in working order, but to get it to the condition
40:52that Tim Stryker knew it in.
40:57After years of hard work and thousands of dollars on restoration, the estimated value of Tim Stryker's
41:03personal Asterac game is $100,000. But currently, there are no plans to put it up for auction.
41:11Imagine how proud Tim Stryker would be knowing that people are finally playing his game,
41:18which just goes to show whether it's a one-of-a-kind video game,
41:22a little blue box, or a lovable robot. If it's weirdly wired, there's money to be made.
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