Classic game publisher cleans out its closet, makes thousands on eBay

Natsume’s auctioning off sealed copies of its decades-old games for big markups.

Kyle Orland – Jan 13, 2016 12:11 pm | 32

Natsume made 2,800% more on this cartridge by waiting 23 years to sell it.

These days, it’s not uncommon to see unopened, “factory sealed” copies of games from decades-past selling on eBay for huge markups over the original price they demanded on the shelves of Funcoland or Babbage’s. Usually, though, those mint condition games are being resold by forward-thinking collectors looking to make a profit. But at least one storied game publisher is currently getting in on the act, making some decent profits by clearing out sealed copies of classic games that have been sitting around its office shelves for decades.

To be sure, the bulk of Natsume’s business still comes from the niche games it continues to publish for the Wii U, 3DS, and PlayStation Vita. But the Japanese publisher’s eBay store has recently started to include brand new copies of older games from Natsume’s back catalog, plucked directly from the company’s office closets.

Natsume’s collection of sellable legacy titles boasts a lot of forgettable, low-cost “classics” such as Reel Fishing on the Wii and Math Play for the DS. But it also has quite a few well-regarded games that are relatively hard to find in factory-sealed condition today, including SNES action games Pocky & Rocky, epic RPG Lufia II, and farming simulator Harvest Moon 64.

These gaming collectibles, which have been gathering dust around the Natsume office for decades, are obviously worth a lot more now than they were when Natsume originally sold them. The company auctioned a sealed copy of Pocky & Rocky for $1,691.66, a 2,819 percent increase in value from its original $60 retail price 23 years ago. Other classic cartridges have gone for over $700 or over $300 on Natsume’s eBay store. For context, $60 invested in the S&P 500 back in 1993 (when Pocky & Rocky came out) would be worth just $258.30 today.

Why clear out the offices now? “We’ve kept copies around of games for a variety of reasons,” Natsume Community Manager CeeCee told Nintendo DS blog Tiny Cartridge. “Review copies before digital distribution was a thing, warranty needs, etc. Over time, these copies slowly added up until we had a fairly extensive collection of classic titles, just not in large numbers for any singular game.” CeeCee provided Tiny Cartridge with a picture of the shelves at the Natsume offices, showing dozens of original PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS games the company will presumably be auctioning off soon.

We can only hope other publishers are sitting on similar stockpiles of hard-to-find gaming classics in some forgotten office closet. Maybe others will decide to follow Natsume’s lead in cleaning out their stocks on eBay. After all, in a world where people can sell literal trash from an Atari landfill for thousands of dollars, a copy of Excitebike that’s been sitting at Nintendo HQ for 30 years would probably fetch a pretty penny.