Doom "master disks" up for auction on eBay

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/322658896676?

A guy is selling what he claims are 5.25" "master disks" for Doom v1.1. Nothing about the auction seems especially fishy, but given that it's a pretty bold claim, I've asked Romero on Twitter if he can shed any light on the veracity of the claims and contacted the guy to ask for better pictures / more information.

I also notice the auction mentions Romero's auction of some Doom 2 disks a few months back, and refers to them as "the original Doom 2 masters," which is blatantly untrue and makes me a little suspicious if this guy is trying to cash in.

Man I really hope these are the real deal. If they are indeed the real deal I'd trade one of my kidneys for these. Doom has been such a big part of my life since 93 and this would be the greatest thing I could possibly own.

I wonder why the same person has raised the bid by him/herself, although there are no competitors around. Can someone explain this for me, except the guy is trying to inflate the price?

Well spotted... Looks like a sock account being used to artificially tease people into thinking this is valuable and worth bidding on. Dodgy as fuck all around.

35 minutes ago, antares031 said:

I wonder why the same person has raised the bid by him/herself, although there are no competitors around. Can someone explain this for me, except the guy is trying to inflate the price?

It's because you're not looking at automatic bids. Ebay lets you set a max bid (say, $500) even if the current bid is lower (say, $100) so it would only show your bid as $101. Then someone comes along and bids $102 and you'll auto go to $103. For some reason Ebay doesn't show the auto bids by default so it's probably just one person constantly inching up the price trying to figure out where the other guy's max bid is. Once you turn on auto bids you'll see it's two different people going back and forth. Though it could be two sock accounts of course...

(I do love how currently the top bid is $666)

i wonder how many people will be duped by this

1 hour ago, Magnusblitz said:

...Once you turn on auto bids you'll see it's two different people going back and forth. Though it could be two sock accounts of course...

 

(I do love how currently the top bid is $666)

Ah, this explains everything. Thanks for the comment. :)

4 hours ago, Linguica said:

 

 

Wait, so the disks in that last auction were actually "master disks", as in, something given to a plant for mass duplication?

Because that's certainly not the impression one was left with. With the floppies being v1.7 and all...  

The bidding looks perfectly legitimate. I do it all the time to avoid bidding too high. Better increment in small steps until you reach your limit, so that when you finally catch up you only are s small bit in the lead.

The entire thing still looks like a scam, though.

I know this has been solved but I assume "the original master disks" wouldn't be sent to a guy that made the strategy guide. Oh yeah let's just give out the disk that we make the copies of the other disks from.

Speaking of master copies, I remember about 15 years ago the NFL or some major organization was trying to find the original Superbowl as the original TV station's master copy was recorded over to save space and well the Superbowl wasn't that special at the time.

Tha

15 minutes ago, geo said:

Speaking of master copies, I remember about 15 years ago the NFL or some major organization was trying to find the original Superbowl as the original TV station's master copy was recorded over to save space and well the Superbowl wasn't that special at the time.

Actually that happened a lot to 60's and early 70's TV content. A lot of stuff that some people wish they could get back has been lost forever because it was considered worthless.

2 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Tha

Actually that happened a lot to 60's and early 70's TV content. A lot of stuff that some people wish they could get back has been lost forever because it was considered worthless.

 

That's why you need to hoard everything! Super Mario Bros 1 might rise in price up to 90s shmup or 90s JRPG level!

2 hours ago, geo said:

That's why you need to hoard everything! Super Mario Bros 1 might rise in price up to 90s shmup or 90s JRPG level!

probably no, though i think the sonic games on the genesis, particularly sonic cd and knuckles chaotix (because sega CD and 32X games are more expensive) might jump up in price a bit

Megadrive games in general are going up in price more and more recently- just try getting a decent copy of something like Mega Turrican without paying out the butt...and that's one of the cheaper "rare" examples :(

8 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

The bidding looks perfectly legitimate. I do it all the time to avoid bidding too high. Better increment in small steps until you reach your limit, so that when you finally catch up you only are s small bit in the lead.

That's weird, because eBay uses a second-price auction system though, so you don't need to do that? If you have been doing that it's unnecessary. You bid your limit and if you win, the final price is the minimum needed to outbid the second bidder.

The problem is that if you overbid too much there's a high risk that people will test your limit, resulting in higher than necessary final prices.

5 hours ago, Fuzzball said:

Megadrive games in general are going up in price more and more recently- just try getting a decent copy of something like Mega Turrican without paying out the butt...and that's one of the cheaper "rare" examples :(

There's a shop in my city that sells Mega Drive games at a reasonable collector's price (between £5 and £30 depending what it is, quality, whether it's boxed or not etc.). I managed to pick up Two Crude Dudes, Mortal Kombat, the original Sonic and Gauntlet 4 for £50 in total. Sadly Gauntlet 4 didn't work so I got it refunded and later bought Street Fighter 2 for about the same £20 price mark.

Stuff like Super Mario carts were just produced in too many copies to be really valuable (in fact, they were even part of the initial NES bundle). If you have a Nintendo Championship edition cart, a prototype or something like Cheetahmen II, then yeah, we're talking, and it would be closer to what these purpotred "master disks" claim to be.

As for the game itself, no fear of getting lost: too many ROM images and Famiclones containing it, so that's one thing that will survive a holocaust, along with cockroaches.

8 hours ago, Fuzzball said:

Megadrive games in general are going up in price more and more recently- just try getting a decent copy of something like Mega Turrican without paying out the butt...and that's one of the cheaper "rare" examples :(

i mean  you can always emulate

I know- and I do! But for those who collect etc- it's not the point of "You can just emulate!" because many feel that isn't the true way to play retro games. ;P