People are rushing to buy the buried Atari games in New Mexico

Officials in southeastern New Mexico began work on a plan this week to divide a cache of Atari video games dug up from an old landfill last month. Joe Lewandowski, a consultant for the film companies that documented the dig, issued a draft of a distribution plan to Alamogordo city officials on Tuesday. Lewandowski said that some of the games should be given to the filmmakers, museums and the public, the Alamogordo Daily News reported. “They’re considered to have value because they’re part of the legend,” Lewandowski told The Associated Press on Friday. “It’s a piece of history.”

At this point some 1,377 game cartridges for the Atari 2600 have been rescued from the New Mexico landfill where they were unceremoniously dumped over 30 years ago. Of those, 700 will be appraised, certified and eventually sold, some of which will pass through the New Mexico Museum of Space History. While many carts will go to the film’s producers and museums like the Smithsonian, some will be sold to the public along with a certificate of authenticity. The details are still being worked out by city officials, but you could soon own a piece of gaming garbage history. The carts that will be commanding the most money will clearly be the 171 copies of E.T. that were unearthed, but titles like Centipede,Missile Command and Asteroids have also been dug up. There are still over 700,000 games buried the in landfill outside of Alamogordo, NM, but they’ll stay there… for now. The hole has been refilled, and the cartridges going on sale will be priced to reflect their rarity. Of course, if the city decides it needs more cash, that could always change.