Buy a piece of home computing history

Who will buy Atari's marketing memories? Maybe you, if you're flush with cash and nostalgia. The fabled Sotheby's auction house is set to sell off a group of Atari marketing materials from the golden age of console gaming, an era which familiarized the average consumer with the concept of interactive play with a big pile of transistors and bits of code.

The collection dates fromt he period between 1981 and 1983 and includes, "2,000 items of widely varying sizes and formats, including manuscript memorandum, internal specification guidelines, original sketches, blue lines, mechanicals, proofs, color separations (including acetates), and screen diagrams"

The whole lot is expected to bring between $150k and $200k US, a sum which represents pure fantasy for most mere mortals. Still, the very idea of owning a piece of that golden period in computing brings a flutter to the heart of many a life-long geek which cut their teeth on Atari's greatest hits and were sucked into a life of code as a result.

For a far less expensive but still incredibly fun trip down memory lane, check out our write-up on the TV commercials of computing's past.

[via Boing Boing]

Tags: Atari, computing, computing history, ComputingHistory, console gaming, ConsoleGaming, news