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What version of the atari 2600 is the rarest?


The Atari Noob1

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What is the rarest version of the atari 2600? I have a six switch woody and it is a heavy sixer. Please do not tell me versions that were not released to public and no unlicensed consoles like the coleco Gemini. I am also curious about the tele games, and please tell me how rare it is. I have seen it twice.

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The Heavy Sixer is the rarest, because it was only made for one year. The light sixer is probably the second most common. The most common is the 4 switch. 4 switch Vader and 4 switch woody are exactly the same console inside and out, except for the wood grain/black front. The 2600 Jr is probably the third most common.

Do you want to consider minor console variations? The early 4 switch woodies used the bottoms from light sixers. They probably just wanted to use up what they had, before they started using 4 switch bottoms. These are rarer than either the 4 switch or 6 switch models.

What about heavy sixers made in Taiwan? These are probably more rare than heavy sixers from California, but the California heavy sixers are more sought after, and thus more valuable.

There really are no rare versions of the 2600 (except for unreleased prototypes). They were sold in wide distribution to many retailers including Sears. It's not like Sears would place an order for 100 consoles, they would sell out quickly, and Sears would not reorder more.

If you just check eBay, you can buy every version of the console at any time. Some versions are more desirable to collectors, so they are more expensive, but not rare.

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Globally: Maybe Atari 2800.

USA: Maybe Sears Video Arcade II

 

Most of the others including Heavy Sixers and variations seems quite common to me because I have acquired them so easily and cheaply with some doubles.

 

I think the Columbia House Gemini would be more rare than the Sears Video Arcade II.

 

EDIT: Totally agree with you on the 2800 for sure though.

Edited by Shawn
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I think the Columbia House Gemini would be more rare than the Sears Video Arcade II.

 

EDIT: Totally agree with you on the 2800 for sure though.

What is the rarest version of the atari 2600? I have a six switch woody and it is a heavy sixer. Please do not tell me versions that were not released to public and no unlicensed consoles like the coleco Gemini. I am also curious about the tele games, and please tell me how rare it is. I have seen it twice.

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Speaking as a Canadian collector, the Sears model is definitely rare. These were NOT sold in Canada, so any consoles that turn-up here were originally personal imports.

 

Since I began collecting in about 1990, I have seen exactly one Sears console in a shop (and that was in a city fairly close to the US border).

 

I do not know if the "Heavy 6" model was sold here; all of the later models certainly were.

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  • 2 months later...

What is the rarest version of the atari 2600? I have a six switch woody and it is a heavy sixer. Please do not tell me versions that were not released to public and no unlicensed consoles like the coleco Gemini. I am also curious about the tele games, and please tell me how rare it is. I have seen it twice.

 

Probably the Japanese version, quite similar to the "Sears Video Arcade II" but much less common

 

[ pictures 2-3-4 taken from the Atari 2800 of a friend of mine (Marco Miccoli) ]

 

 

 

Maybe the Juniors "Made in Ireland" (short rainbow) with the "Colour/BW" -switch.

 

What was the reason that Atari changed the 2600 for the Japanese market so much?

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What was the reason that Atari changed the 2600 for the Japanese market so much?

 

Atari was constantly updating and iterating the 2600 everywhere, not just Japan. But when Atari decided to enter the Japanese market, I doubt they wanted to do it with a basic shape that was six years old at that point. So they gave Japan the latest design, but I doubt that design was intended specifically for the Japanese market, as the Sears Video Arcade II attests to. It was probably just the newest design of the system that they'd been working on. They never released it themselves in the US, but that was probably more to appease Sears than anything else.

 

There was an Atari 2700 in the interim that was almost released in the US, but in some ways the 2800 looks very similar. The 2700 is a bit more angular (like a smaller 5200) but both have the "wedge" shape that Atari would later become famous for. So I don't think the 2800 was developed just for Japan. It was just where Atari's designs were going at that time, and they wanted to make a splash in Japan with their newest design. (I guess it's also worth mentioning that the 2800 became the 7800 case in the US.)

 

I'm still kicking myself for not buying the 2800 I saw sitting on the floor at Super Potato in Japan about a decade ago...

Edited by spacecadet
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Is that for The Partridge Family, Rainbow Brite, Care Bears, or something Mork conjured up to play for himself? lol.

It's the Kee Games console. IIRC only two are known to exist,

 

For those not familiar, Kee Games was a sort of like a puppet company set up by Atari to sell more arcade machines (as I understand it, back in the '70s, a lot of arcades and operators had caps on how many games they would/could buy from a vendor; this was a way for Atari to circumvent that). Atari eventually just absorbed Kee in the late '70s, but apparently not before the idea was broached to sell a Kee-branded version of the VCS. Obviously that never happened, but at least two prototypes were built before the kibosh was put on that.

 

Too bad...I can only imagine what Kee Games cartridge label variations would have looked like!

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