Latest news with #Nintendo64s
Metro
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Man bought £1,500 container filled with £60,000 worth of Pokémon merch
A man who took a gamble on a storage unit found it was filled with thousands of pounds worth of Pokémon merch and retro gaming consoles. The 39-year-old man behind the YouTube Channel, Wades Venture, snapped up the 10ft by 20ft container in an online auction. To his delight, it was stuffed with old PlayStations, Xboxes and Nintendo 64s, as well as other retro gaming consoles he valued at £60,000 – 30 times the £2,000 he paid to unlock the unit. He also found a treasure trove of around 1,000 Pokémon cards, organised in a thick binder and stored immaculately in cardboard boxes. 'They're from the 1990s,' he said. 'So these are the old ones, the desirable Pokémon cards.' He added that the collector must not have played with them as they were in near-perfect condition, with some kept pristine in the original packaging. The YouTuber makes a living documenting and reselling his findings in abandoned storage units and has gained almost 200,000 Channel subscribers. While thumbing through stacks of the rare cards, Wade said: 'I've been doing this ten years. I find these 1990 cards. But I've never found any that old and in this good condition.' He said he even washed his hands prior to handling them to preserve their near-flawless condition. Wade has started selling the items and has already flogged some of the Pokémon cards, earning $6,000 – or around £4,400. After purchasing the unit for $2,000 – the equivalent of around £1,500 – he has already made a profit of close to £3,000. More Trending Wade also uncovered boxes of Nintendo DS consoles, Game Boys, PlayStations, an Atari game console and controllers hand-labelled with their model numbers, as well as countless retro games – with some sealed in their original plastic. While digging through the stacks of gaming consoles, he said to viewers: 'Who'd have thought? This is crazy. 'Maybe we should play some Mario.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Fans rage as one of TV's most iconic ever episodes is 'ruined' by huge change MORE: Big Coronation Street and Emmerdale news confirmed as ITV issue statement MORE: YouTube star Mikayla Raines, 29, dies by suicide after online bullying campaign
Scottish Sun
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
I spent £1.4K on a mystery shipping container & had no clue what was inside – I became £58K richer when I opened it
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A MAN took a £1.4K gamble buying a storage container with no idea what was inside - only to find it full of rare Pokémon merch worth up to £58K. Wade Venture, 39, snapped up the 10ft by 20ft storage unit in an online auction - with little idea of what was inside. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 4 Wade Venture, 39, snapped up the 10ft by 20ft storage unit in an online auction - with little idea of what was inside Credit: SWNS 4 Wade has sent some of the cards off to a grading company but estimates in total he will earn £58K from the unit Credit: SWNS 4 Wade has been bidding on containers for the last nine years - and reckons he has flipped 2000 - earning millions of dollars Credit: SWNS To his surprise, it contained 1,000 rare Pokémon cards, old PlayStations, Xboxes, and Nintendo 64s as well as retro console games. Wade has started selling the items and has already flogged five percent of the Pokémon cards for £4.3k - putting him £2.9k in profit so far. Wade - who shares his finds online under @wadesventures - has sent some of the cards off to a grading company but estimates in total he will earn £58K from the unit. He has flipped around 2000 units since he went full-time, including one filled with £58K worth of Nike clothes and one with designer clothes worth £51k. Wade, a content creator, from Portland, Oregon, said: "The Pokémon find was such a good unit, it was just five minutes away from my house. "That was such an incredibly lucky find - I had no idea what was inside. "The [Pokémon] cards are in fantastic shape. I have around 600 of these cards. "I sold five percent of the unit yesterday on an auction platform called WhatNots - we made little over £4.3k. "I think we are going to make around £58k on this container when it is all sold. "Off a £1.4k investment, that is incredible." I spent £136 to see if the lost luggage trend was worth it - I thought I'd nab designer goodies but it was a total flop Wade has been bidding on containers for the last nine years - and reckons he has flipped 2000 - earning millions of dollars. He became inspired by the popular show Storage Wars - a show where buyers bid on storage units - and quit his corporate job as a WHAT after 11 years to go full-time flipping storage containers. Wade said: "I was obsessed with the show Storage Wars and thought it looked like fun. "I was working a corporate job at the time on a £146k a year salary. "Nine years ago, I quit my job to go full-time." Wade said he hasn't had constant success, and the first container he bought was the worst one he ever purchased. Where to find mystery boxes MYSTERY boxes are becoming more and more popular, with people keen to take a gamble in buying one. But where can you get one from? Charity shops Lots of charity shops have started putting together mystery boxes as a way to get rid of stock that they've been otherwise unable to sell. While you can never guarantee what you're going to get, these boxes are usually cheaper than ones bought elsewhere. eBay Many retailers use eBay to sell their stock, with options on the auction site including unclaimed luggage or parcel returns, all put together in a mystery box. It's not like a normal 'auction' though - there will usually be a buy it now price so it's just like any other internet transaction. Online retailers As the popularity of mystery boxes increases, other retailers have started selling them in the hope that they will be a hit among customers. Have a look on sites such as Amazon, Etsy and Wowcher, and you'll often find the mystery boxes are listed by genre too. Google If there's a particular niche mystery box you're looking for, it's always worth searching for it. There are so many websites out there selling mystery boxes, you'll undoubtedly find what you're after. As with buying anything online, make sure you are purchasing from a trusted retailer and a secure website. But he persisted and his third container, was filled with £58k of Nike merch. He said: "After being inspired by Storage Wars, I was intrigued and really wanted to give it a go. "You see them getting all sorts of treasure, but the first one I bought was a really bad unit. "It was just full of metal, which you couldn't get any money for - it was the worst unit I have ever bought. "I persisted, and my third unit was in Oregon; it was filled with vintage Nike, and I made £58k off it." In total, Wade estimates he has bought 2,000 units, earning him millions of dollars. 4 Wade said he hasn't had constant success, and the first container he bought was the worst one he ever purchased Credit: SWNS So far this year, he and his wife, Ashley, 38, who flips storage units with him, are on track to surpass a million dollars. Wade said: "Last year we earned half a million — I have earned millions of dollars since I started. "This year, we are on pace to do a million this year. "You don't get home runs all the time, but containers like the Pokémon one are where we earn the most money." The Pokémon unit contained around 1,000 vintage cards, over 60 game consoles and retro video games. He said: "I'm not a complete Pokémon guy, but this unit was incredible. "They had the first edition Pokémon cards - there were probably over 1,000 of them. "We found boxes filled with game consoles - I reckon there were 60 of them in total."
The Guardian
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘There's no stress': gamers go offline in retro console revival
Nestled between an original Donkey Kong arcade machine, a mint condition OutRun racing simulation game and booths wired up with GameCubes and Nintendo 64s, the engineer Luke Malpass works away dismantling a broken Nintendo Wii. There has been a steady stream of people bringing in their old game consoles for repairs or modifications, on the house, to Four Quarters, a retro games arcade in Elephant and Castle, which has been transformed into a games clinic for two days. Gabriella Rosenau, 35, brought in her broken Wii that had been in the garage 'for years'. 'I still play my brother's old Nintendo 64 and I love it, but I'd really love to get [the Wii] fixed.' 'I've done the odd bit of Call of Duty and the PlayStation stuff, but I have more of an interest in the retro games,' she adds. Rosenau is part of a growing community who are ditching contemporary video games and picking up the consoles from their childhood, or even before their time. And gen Z gamers are following suit, with 24% owning a retro console, according to research by Pringles. What started as a passion project for Malpass, restoring consoles to their former glory, quickly evolved into a full-time business. At its peak during lockdown, his company RetroSix employed 16 people to cope with demand. He puts this down – in part – to people being stuck at home. 'People were bored, finding things at home and searching for things online. 'We originally were just selling on eBay, we didn't even have a site, and eBay were limiting our sales because they thought it was fraudulent,' he says. 'It literally took over.' RetroSix still gets hundreds of requests each month from people hoping to get their consoles fully working and playable, or upgraded. This has 'stabilised', Malpass says, though the community is still expanding. 'There's a whole variety of people who are into this now. The older-than-me generation, so sort of late 40s, early 50s, who tend to be PC-based with Amigas and Commodores. Then my age, so people in their 30s, who are very much into the Game Boys, the Mega Drives, Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems, things like that. 'And then there's a younger generation that are either into [the] Nintendo DS, things they played with that are starting to become retro, or they're just really obsessed with retro as a whole. So you do get people in their 20s that are more obsessed than we are, even though they didn't grow up with it,' he says. Malpass has amassed a large following on social media and has 61,700 subscribers on his YouTube channel, AngelSix, and 44,100 followers on RetroSix's TikTok, where he shares videos about repairs and his inventions with the community. The young people who engage online say they are reaching for retro games because of the distinctive gameplay, and for the chance to 'switch off', Malpass says. 'You turn your console on at the top, you're gaming. There's no stress, there's no internet, you're not competing against the world. You've got yourself in a game, you feel a sense of achievement as you're going and that was originally what you used to do,' he says. 'I think younger generations have got a lot more stress now, growing up in the social media world is mentally very challenging. [Retro video gaming] is their safe place. It's like their escape,' he says. Matthew Dolan, a software developer in his 40s, brought along parts of his Game Gear console. His passion for retro gaming and technology stems from nostalgia and childhood memories playing games his father had written for him on the BBC Micro. 'It was a great introduction to technology,' he says. 'You get all that joy from just literally playing it. Going through batteries, planning your long car journeys out based on how long they'll last,' he says. 'They're not relying on flashy graphics in the same way [as contemporary games].' Going one step further, Dolan now fixes and adapts consoles himself, and says he spent £7,000 on the hobby last year. 'I got some of that back, from selling things on, but it's not cheap.' He got stuck trying to repair some of the chips on his Game Gear and needed Malpass's expertise. A repaired Prestige Edition Game Gear console from RetroSix costs £298.80. The LED edition costs £334.80 and mods or servicing on the console start at £36. Game Boy A handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It first came out in Japan in 1989 and was released in Europe in 1990. It is estimated more than 118.7m Game Boys and Game Boy Colors have been sold worldwide, making it one of the most successful handheld consoles of its era, popular owing to its compact design and affordability. SNES The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as the Super NES, was the second home video game console released by Nintendo internationally. It was first released in 1990 by Nintendo in Japan and reached Europe in 1992. It is estimated that the SNES sold 49.1m units worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. Xbox original The Xbox console was Microsoft's first games console offering and the first instalment in the Xbox series of consoles, first released in Europe in 2002. At the time, it sold for £299 and was competing with Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube. The second-generation Xbox 360 was released in 2005. Amiga A line of personal computers produced by Commodore International from 1985 until 1994, until its bankruptcy. Other companies continued producing the Amiga after this. The Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000, was the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It was known for its advanced graphics and sound. Popular games include Alien Breed, Syndicate, Sensible Soccer and Eye of the Beholder. Game Gear A handheld gaming console, released by Sega in Japan in 1990 and in Europe the following year. Game Gear primarily competed with Nintendo's Game Boy, the Atari Lynx, and NEC's TurboExpress. During 1991, about 520,000 Game Gears were sold across Europe, with more than 130,000 of those being sold in the UK.
