Rare ZX Spectrum titles fetch a high price on ebay

As a collector of all things Sinclair I was interested in a particular auction back in December for the following set of rare Sinclair branded educational/business titles. The photos are from the actual auction listings.

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Micro Prolog (L 2/S) – by Logic Programming Associates
Which? Tax Calculator 1983-84 (4332) – by Consumer’s Association

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Weathermaster (4325) – by Macmillan
MacMan’s Magic Mirror (4335) – by Macmillan

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Disease Dodgers (4327) – by Macmillan
Planet Patrol (4326) – by Macmillan

oil-strike

Oil Strike (4324) – by Macmillan

Now of all the titles above the ones that I was particularly interested in were the Macmillan educational titles and the Which? Tax Calculator. Educational titles were not very popular for the ZX Spectrum, no matter how many times we told Mom and Dad that we needed the Speccy for our education, everyone really knew (including Mom and Dad I suspect) that we only wanted to play JetPac. So it follows that educational titles were not sold in huge numbers and are therefore rarer finds. Add to that, the above titles were not produced in any great numbers anyway and you end up with a set of very rare titles indeed.

It seems that on that night Sinclair collectors with much deeper pockets were ready to spring into action. I didn’t leave empty handed, I managed to bag Micro Prolog, the title I least wanted. The other titles all pushed the boundaries and exceeded the amounts I had ever seen paid for ZX Spectrum titles of this nature with the following winning bids:

zx-ed-titles-bids

As you can see with the one I won, I was way off the mark and as keen as I am, could never afford to (or want to) spend that much on one ZX Spectrum software title let alone six. It would end in divorce. Or castration in my sleep.

There are certain items that remain the holy grail of any collector’s wishlist and whilst these titles are definitely on my list, I won’t be spending this sort of money to acquire them. I’ll just wait until I see them in a box amongst some other stuff at a car boot sale going for a song. In my dreams…

Do you know of any auctions worth mentioning (past or present)? Let us know about them if you think they would be of interest – admin@retrogamescollector.com

13 Comments

  1. All I can say is – Flabbergasted! The MacMillan titles could possibly be rarer than most spectrum software titles as they were educational and may not have sold quite so well as some of the million selling games.

  2. theres 1 on ebay now macmillan science i will post how much it sell for

  3. hi i have a spectrum zx+ in carry case and well over 500 games, i want to auction them at a specialist auction any ideas???

  4. Author

    If you are in the UK, let me have details of the items, this is something I may well be interested in purchasing from you… 🙂

  5. Author

    LOL, these were going for a song a long time before this clown decided to read my article during his ‘research’ for how much to list his copy of Oil Strike. You will also find articles on my website (quite a lot of them actually, along with numerous Twitter posts and Facebook rants) about how much I detest the profiteers. But take my article down? Really? No.

  6. I have a Sinclair McMillan spectrum science horizon survival boxed was wondering wat it was worth

  7. Author

    Sorry to break this to you but it’s probably one of the most common games out there 🙁
    This was bundled with hundreds of thousands of 48K Spectrum’s back in the day and therefore there are a lot of them around.

    If you were really luck you may get £1 for it.
    Regards, Ant

  8. I have just discovered in my loft some spectrum stuff big box of games and to units a64k and a 128k where would be the best place to sell with in the UK want it gone as a job lot

  9. I sold the above mentioned titles on ebay at the time! I did spend some time trying to locate them. They were sold to me by a person who ran a zx80/1 user club in a Birmingham high school! (I have his name if interested). I nearly fell off my chair at the amount they sold for…never seen them since, exceedingly rare titles! I also have the NASA Microace user club notes as well somewhere, based on the illegal(?) microace zx80 clone produced in the US if anyone is interested!?

  10. Author

    Yes Chris, would be interested in more details if you didn’t mind. Email me admin[at]retrogamescollector[dot]com.

  11. I have on ZX spectrum, European Superleague, is that worth anything?

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