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I don't understand the cognitive dissonance seemingly on display by the game collector throughout the article: > He’d had a kind of philanthropic hubris as an owner and collector, someone who never gave a second thought to keeping his legendary game collection a secret. He’d gladly let YouTubers film in the back; he would even open the safe back there and show them, item by item, his Louvre. Other collectors had rare games, sure, but in the back room of his store, and especially in the safe, he was proud to own 10,000 of what he described as “cherry” copies—his preferred term for virgin condition. and again... > And though the value of retro games had exploded in the past few years, he’d never been concerned about the safety of the thousands of games from his legendary collection—some of the most valuable video games on earth. and yet again... > Though the vault door didn’t work then and was mainly for show, that anything behind it could be, would be, stolen seemed unimaginable. It is repeated time and time again that these items are valuable, that the collector was keenly aware that they are extremely valuable, and yet he also repeatedly seemed to refuse to acknowledge that you need to take steps to protect valuables, and the more valuable something is the more steps you need to take to protect it. I don't want to 'victim blame', suffering a burglary is a horrible experience, but it is one compounded by foolhardiness. |
Stored that collection in an area anyone could locate with a google search.
Did not have agreed value insurance for the collectable games, likely because he was worried about documenting the collection to avoid taxes.
The vault/safe were non-functional.
There were no interior or exterior video cameras.
Considered collectable items his "retirement plan" (again, avoiding taxes would be my guess.)
Absolutely insane. At least he seems to have landed on his feet - he's now employed as a video game grader by CGC.
The other thing that is insane is that over and over the other video game store owners strongly suspected or knew what was going on, had had opportunities to call police, and plenty of ability to stall the thieves. One of several examples:
> Again, Jackson declined to provide any ID. While Young pretended to look up prices—he had no intention of purchasing any of the games—he told a colleague to take a picture of Jackson’s license plate. Young remembered reading about Trade-N-Games, and he called Brassard.
Oh. My. God.
Call. The. FUCKING. POLICE. In many states you don't even have to call - you can text, so it just looks like you're fucking around on your cell phone.