A Heritage Auction over the weekend netted tens of thousands of dollars for a local entrepreneur’s dream to create a larger destination store for video gamers in the area.
Zac Gieg, owner of Just Press Play, a video game store with several locations in Lancaster County and one in York County, sold three rare pieces of video game history at a Heritage Auction this past weekend, netting a total of $35,750.
The items were sold to help contribute funds towards the planned $3.5 million Just Press Play “megastore” at 2007 Lincoln Highway East in the 20,000-square-foot former Volleyball Corner building. The site will host a sale the weekend of items from Press Play locations as Gieg keeps raising money to set up the megastore.
“The prototypes, that sort of thing, I don't have to have that stuff, and I knew they were worth a nice chunk of change that I could put right towards the project,” Gieg said, explaining how he chose the items to sell from his significant personal collection. “We're doing the floors, we just got the place painted, and all that stuff costs an absurd amount of money. I'm looking for things that I can basically live without as a collector right now."
Gieg said that he will continue to work with Heritage Auctions as he finds more items in his collection that he doesn’t mind parting with.
The items in this auction included:
-A prototype controller for Nintendo’s Utra 64, itself an early version of the Nintendo 64 console that was eventually released to the public in 1996. According to Gieg, the 1995 prototype is one of only two or three in existence. The controller sold for $20,000.
-A set of prototype controllers for what would become the Nintendo Wii. This set of controllers serves as a bridge between the tech of the 2001 GameCube and 2006 Wii. These controllers were relatively unknown before being sold by an auction house in 2018. The controllers sold for $11,250.
-An early 1982 prototype Atari Video System X system, which served as the basis for what was later sold to the public as the Atari 5200 console later the same year. As with the prototype Ultra 64 controller, Gieg said that there couldn’t be “more than a handful of these VSX prototypes” available to collectors. The console sold for $4,500.
Heritage Auctions spokesperson Christina Rees said that more than 1,300 bidders took part in the weekend’s auction, which netted a total of $1,663,563. The highest single seller was a pristine boxed copy of the 1998 Game Boy classic Pokémon Red, which sold for $81,250.
In an effort to continue raising funds towards the new store, there will be a sale this weekend at the “megastore” location from Feb. 28 through March 2. Items for sale range from video games and consoles from all eras, as well as other collectibles.
“It's a very different landscape than it was pre-COVID,” Gieg said. “People realize now that, like comic books, like baseball cards, other collectibles, people understand that they can be very valuable, and people didn't used to think that.”
CHAD UMBLE | Staff Writer
