Clan Dragon alerted me to this sale on eBay, which features an apparently original, Zip-Loc-bagged version of the cover and manual for Akalabeth, Richard Garriott’s first widely published game and the origin (heh) of the Ultima series.

Currently, the package is valued at $2,225, with just under two days remaining in the sale as of the time of this writing.

Furthermore, there’s this:

We got the item from Lynn Abbey, the author of 2 Ultima books. We got it with some of her autographed Ultima books we are selling for her in our eBay store.

It is authentic, including the baggie. The baggie has been authenticated by 2 sources.

So not only is this the genuine article, the original Akalabeth in the original packaging…but it was the copy given to (or purchased by) none other than Ultima novel authoress Lynn Abbey. That’s pretty cool.

There’s just one catch:

This is the original manual and cover art for Akalabeth (unofficial Ultima 0, created by Richard Garriott). It is in a baggie which might be the original but I don’t know that for sure. The baggie looks exactly like the one pictured on the Moby Games website.

It does NOT come with the disk.

This is just the manual and the cover illustration. The disk is lost to history and/or Lynn Abbey’s basement. That means this is an unsealed original copy of Akalabeth…an unsealed, incomplete copy. And yet, it’s going to fetch close to $2,500 by the time its sale closes, if not more.

Insane.

Update: Final selling price…$4,900 USD.

Like I said: insane.