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byuu's SNES preservation project: $10k in EU games missing in post. Update: Found!

Ouch.

A Nintendo fan's project to digitally preserve every SNES game has ended in defeat after the US Postal Service (USPS) lost a package containing 100 cartridges.

The parcel contained between $7500 and $10k worth of vintage games, which were en route to amateur archivist Byuu.

The package made the journey from Frankfurt to Byuu's home state of New Jersey, but after this was lost by the USPS. It was the second of five planned shipments of games from a European collector, who has now been left without a large chunk of their collection.

Byuu had planned to borrow the games, 100 at a time, dump the cartridge's contents, then repackage them and send them back. This worked fine for the first 100, so Byuu was eagerly awaiting the second shipment to continue his work.

After the shipment went missing, Byuu spent weeks appealing for help on Reddit from anyone who worked within the USPS or knew anyone at its New Jersey processing centre. But, after more than a month of no word, Byuu's luck seems to have run out.

Writing on Reddit last night, Byuu admitted defeat. His focus is now to reimburse the European collector for the games which were lost - people have suggested he set up a GoFundMe to help, which he said he may do.

But the preservation project is over - at least, for now.

"I'd rather start working on reimbursing the sender now, as game prices only go up," Byuu wrote. "He lent me 100 valuable games (Vampire's Kiss, Incantation, Hagane, Mega Man 7+X+X2+X3, etc etc), and now I can't send his games back."

"It was a terrible mistake have him trust the mail system. I'm not going to risk anyone else's games like that again."
 

Patryn

Member
Did they not insure that package? If you're shipping almost $10k of games, it seems beyond foolish to not have crazy insurance.
 
Did they not insure that package? If you're shipping almost $10k of games, it seems beyond foolish to not have crazy insurance.

Yeah, this is terrible but they really should have used some kind of ultra-premium shipping service and had insurance. Crazy not to.
 
Heartbreaking. I hope insurance can cover something, but it's not going to replace all of the work tracking down replacements.
 
How can all those games just be "lost"? Where are they? Why doesn't USPS have to reimburse you if they lose $10k worth of shit?
 
Wouldn't it have been cheaper and easier to just send his equipment to the guy with all the games? He could dump them and put the files in the clouds.
 

TronLight

Everybody is Mikkelsexual
Sending 10k$ worth of games with standard mail? Pay some more and use a courier, jesus. This sucks, but it could have been avoided.
 
Ugh... man, what a terrible loss for that collector.

Did they not insure that package? If you're shipping almost $10k of games, it seems beyond foolish to not have crazy insurance.

I was just about to say... you can't send something that valuable through the post without insurance on it. Huge fuck-up.
 

Gaugin

Neo Member
wow, why didn't they just send the dumping equipment to Frankfurt instead? Would make it way easier.


What a shame all those games went missing, they really didn't think this through
 
As a seller on eBay trading in games and collectibles -

I feel your pain Byuu. I feel your pain.

Not only that but there are some games so rare that only a handful of physical copies exist in the world and losing one of those is the equivalent to losing a work of art - it's not something you can just replace.

I know it's only material things and in retrospect of people losing limbs or loved ones etc... it's not that big of a deal but it's still a tough pill to swallow for the collector.

This is why I always get my packages insured.....
 

Fluxdyne

Member
He was making sure they were bit by bit perfect copies, and he was archiving the box art, and cover art as well (unsure about manuals.)

Yeah, and he actually found some instances that the previous "good" dump was actually corrupted (mostly affecting some pixels in sprite data).
 

1morerobot

Member
He needs to be tweeting this at Nintendo. With stories like this that make even a bit of publicity, usually someone will get off their ass and find it.
 

Rolodzeo

Member
But this is stupid as hell. I mean, did he not purchase an insurance for those games? Why on Earth didn't he send the rom dumping device(s) to Europe instead the other way around? Why was he dumping games that are already dumped on the internet? This is completely bonkers.
 
Did they not insure that package? If you're shipping almost $10k of games, it seems beyond foolish to not have crazy insurance.

Get a fucking courier for 10k value. Buy a plane ticket.

Or maybe just collaborate remotely with the European collector to dump and scan everything..
 

notaskwid

Member
31f71db433d2db1f493e13b57ab15d0b.jpg
 
"Lost"

USPS is always the worst for me. I try to avoid them at all cost. UPS/Fedex or some high end service should have been used for a package of that value.

Poor guy.
 

dallow_bg

nods at old men
But this is stupid as hell. I mean, did he not purchase an insurance for those games? Why on Earth didn't he send the rom dumping device(s) to Europe instead the other way around? Why was he dumping games that are already dumped on the internet? This is completely bonkers.

It probably would have been cheaper for him to fly to Europe and just dump them over the course of a week.
 

cheesekao

Member
It honestly baffles me how USPS gets away scott free for losing 10k worth of stuff that they had the responsibility or delivering. Is there no law against this?
 

Gouty

Bloodborne is shit
Are people who come into contact with packages within the USPS aware of their estimated value?
 
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