If you are of a certain age and owned a ZX Spectrum  you will remember well the playground taunts from your Commodore owning friends regarding colour clash, its rubber keyboard and feeble sound effects. Likewise if you owned a Commodore 64 you will remember the playground taunts regarding washed out colours, peeks and pokes and the relative lack of software in your local WH Smith.

If you do, then you will be interested to read Robert John Shepherd’s article over at MyReviewer.com where he tries to settle the argument once and for all. Intelligently, unlike back in the early 80′s…

The software in question here is none other than the very rare Sinclair branded Macmillan Education titles; MacMan In The Treasure Caves, MacMans Magic Mirror and Soundabout.

As mentioned in our earlier post on this topic, Sinclair branded educational titles can fetch surprising sums in an auction and these were no exception, with Soundabout making a whopping £156.09, MacMan In The Treasure Caves making £129.45 and MacMans Magic Mirror making a very respectable £78.00.

Thanks to Guy Bearman for the info.

It might not seem like a lot of money to pay, but prior to WJ’s demise the game was pretty much worthless. Doubt if it would have had a single bid let alone 8 of them.

Worse still it looks like everyone is digging out their old Moonwalker games, I just saw the Amiga version with a starting price of £29.99 and a Commodore 64 version starting at £19.99. Sad but true.

Now I’m sure I’ve got a copy here somewhere…

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

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

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

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:

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