$50k of vintage games isn't a childhood game collection any more though, that's a pretty substantial asset.
Yeah, but keep in mind that collection was worth about $4000 six or seven years ago. He's had it since the games first came out. Collected it with his father from what I'm told.
It's only recently that the price has skyrocketed to obscene levels. I believe it started in 2011. I remember an auction in 2013 for a complete PAL cart-only set for $17,000. Now, Mega Man X3 -alone, loose cart- will set you back $850+.
He didn't see any identifying information on the letter or envelope in your pictures though.
Thankfully, the media attention caught the eye of USPS consumer affairs, and a case has been opened as of a few hours ago. I've learned far more about the USPS than I ever wanted to know lately. But I did hear the terms Nixie, CMU, etc brought up.
It sounds like there's a whole lot of possibilities right now, unfortunately.
Yep law states that you should declare all assets, however I think asking someone to declare a dusty collection from a childhood is a bit much and I wouldn't bother declaring it myself. It's more single things like vehicles/savings etc
That's the issue. In just the past few years, a 20+ year old collection is now suddenly worth the price of a nice car. Flagging the package for 10000 Euros of insurance would raise issues.
Plus, as has been said repeatedly, you cannot prove these games are worth 10000, which would be required to get that level of insurance. If you could just buy whatever insurance you want, people would be doing things to try and scam that insurance money.
eBay listings do not work for proof of value. They go off commercial sale prices, and these games are not for sale.
I am not making this up, I had the same difficulties when I shipped his last batch of games back to him.
by chance have you posted a list of the games that were in the bundle that we could all keep a look out for?
Not yet. Could allow others to try and make claims for the titles as well. I will release them all once consumer affairs gives up.
By all accounts, I have not seen it mentioned anywhere that the ROM is being deleted after he's collected the checksum. I'm assuming part of the preservation is keeping an archive of the ROM since basically that's the core to preservation.
It's not necessary at all. Nor is it ever necessary to give any games out to anyone.
All I have to do is record the SHA256 sum of the ROM image while the cart is in my possession.
There are no known collisions for the much weaker SHA1 yet. SHA256 is substantially stronger. That means that knowing the SHA256 of an SNES game, NOBODY can make a fake version that has the same checksum right now. So if they have the original game, my database will confirm it for them. If they have one that's been modified, it'll do that too by not having a match in the DB.
What about in the future when SHA256 gets broken? Easy, all we have to do is record SHA3 sums once SHA256 starts to weaken. Anyone on the internet who has the ROMs that match SHA256 can make SHA3s. And by releasing those before SHA256 is broken confirms the SHA3s are good. So this process can be maintained indefinitely.
I am keeping this on the legal up and up. I'm not about to paint a giant target on my back for Nintendo's lawyers.
However an event like theft would also make a new valuation occur. Sadly for him to get his games back he would need to declare the actual value of the lost items.
Exactly this. It's not even just declaring for insurance (which itself has many problems), it's the issue of what happens once it is found out. He's not suddenly going to be able to work again just because he got one seventh of my yearly salary in a lump sum payment (probably reduced to 40% of that after taxation.)
Have you ever done a sleep study?
I have not. I don't think I could manage sleeping somewhere else with a bunch of probes hooked up to me. I'd be wide awake the entire night most likely. It already takes me 2-3 hours to fall asleep after laying down in my own bed.
But, it probably is a good idea.
I hate to say it but I don't think taking legal action is going to work.
You're probably right. I went to r/legaladvice and things look really bad for that angle.
Press attention is the only helpful thing at this point