Neo-Geo: The Unexpectedly High-Stakes World of Neo Geo Collecting

Seven years ago, Shawn McCleskey, a dealer of rare video games, trading cards, and vintage machine guns in Memphis, Tennessee, made one of the biggest sales of his career. It unfolded like a Robert Ludlum novel. A man calling himself Wolf wired McCleskey fifty-five thousand dollars, then showed up a few days later at Memphis International Airport carrying a metallic briefcase. The two men met in the crowded arrivals hall and, after a brief stop at a local Chinese restaurant, proceeded to McCleskey's house, where Wolf inspected the merchandise-a pair of video games released in 1996 for the Neo Geo, a Japanese-made console. Satisfied with each game's condition and authenticity, Wolf opened his briefcase, which had been specially designed to house the foot-long cartridges, and locked them inside. "It was as if the deal was for a bag of diamonds," McCleskey told me recently. As a condition of the sale, he agreed to keep Wolf's identity private.