A copy of Mystery House, the first game developed by the husband and wife duo Ken and Roberta Williams, is set to fetch an impressive figure at auction.
The 44-year-old Apple II horror title came from a time when small-scale developers would sell their games via mail order and ship them in zip-lock bags.
Mystery House would later get more professional packaging, but the copy currently on sale on eBay is one of the initial 10,000 – which, as Digital Eclipse's Chris Kohler has noted on Bluesky, was most likely packed by Roberta "on her kitchen table".
The seller of the game admits that it has been in storage for the past few decades. "I don't think I touched it for 40 years before I unearthed it from a box of old software this week," they say before assuring potential buyers that it's still in working condition.
"Amazingly, the disc still reads for me, although it does chafe alarmingly, probably because it is slightly bent. It will probably return to form weighted down with a book for a little while. Man, if I had any idea what kind of price this might go for, I would have tried to clean it up a little more, but I guess you have seen it now," the seller has said in an update to the auction's description.
At the time of writing, the auction has passed the $4,000 mark but still has over five days remaining.