In sports collectibles, one company’s mistake is another man’s fortune. (Ask Billy Ripken.) Five months after NBA Elite 11’s embarrassing cancellation, copies of the game are still circulating over eBay – as well as box art, download cards, and other mementoes of the game that never was.
NBA Elite 11 was cancelled a week before its street date; retail copies had already made it to distributors and retailers, and they were recalled by EA Sports. Some copies still made it into the wild. The first one that sold, for $US255, was a damaged-case copy that was held out of a shipment that went on to its final destination, before it was called back.
A current auction for NBA Elite 11 – disc only, in a sleeve – is asking $US750. That would be well above the $US400 or so a factory-sealed copy has fetched over the online auction house.
Even the pre-order DLC codes handed out by GameStop are being sold as collectibles. A Canadian eBayer is asking for $US15 and $20 (Canadian) for two that he has.
The site GameSniped estimates about 15 copies have been sold over the past 30 days. That’s pretty brisk for a canceled game. If that rate keeps up, it’ll plunge the price for the disc, although it does depend on how aware bidders are of the actual rarity of the item.
When I talked to the first buyer back in October, he told me he’d never part with it – even though he’d been offered $US1,000 for the disc, multiple times. “I could be the only person in the world to have every single EA Sports NBA game,” he said at the time. “That’s really exciting to me.” Some others might be trying to join that club.
Cancelled & Unreleased PS3 NBA Elite 11 [GameSniped]
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