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"After a life spent collecting video games I decide to sell off my entire collection." If that were the opening sentence of a novel - and I sort of wish it was - it would be one of the big ones. Big in terms of scope, big in terms of character, with a quirky theme that's used to cut through to some kind of irreducible truth about mankind and our need to impose order on reality. As things go, it's the opening sentence of a truly epic eBay auction, instead: a vast selection of video games - a history of games, really - that can be yours for just half a million dollars.
The seller wishes to remain anonymous. Let's call him M. On eBay, he's referring to himself as *videogames.museum*: an apt name, given the scope of the collection he's just put on sale. He's conscious, I think, of the creaky old social stereotype of the collector, a stereotype that lives somewhere between the brittle pedantry of the Simpsons' comic book guy and the dark taxidermists lurking within the pages of a cheap serial killer novel. M wants me to know he's normal: he's in his 40s, he's married with children and, according to a glorious factoid culled from his listing, he's the owner of a pet that "isn't interested in video games." "I'm very reserved, and for me just the idea of being interviewed is almost surreal," he says when I contact him to hear more. Maybe he's right. Maybe there's nothing so very unusual about his collection in the first place?
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