A man who took a gamble on a storage unit opened it to reveal a nerdy Aladdin’s cave stacked with thousands of pounds worth of Pokémon cards and retro gaming consoles.
The 39-year-old man behind the YouTube Channel, Wades Venture, snapped up the 10ft by 20ft container in an online auction.
To his delight, it was stuffed with old PlayStations, Xboxes and Nintendo 64s, as well as other retro gaming consoles he valued at £60,000 – 30 times the £2,000 he paid to unlock the unit.
He also found a treasure trove of around 1,000 Pokémon cards, organised in a thick binder and stored immaculately in cardboard boxes.
‘They’re from the 1990s,’ he said. ‘So these are the old ones, the desirable Pokémon cards.’
He added that the collector must not have played with them as they were in near-perfect condition, with some kept pristine in the original packaging.
The YouTuber makes a living documenting and reselling his findings in abandoned storage units and has gained almost 200,000 Channel subscribers.
While thumbing through stacks of the rare cards, Wade said: ‘I’ve been doing this ten years. I find these 1990 cards. But I’ve never found any that old and in this good condition.’
He said he even washed his hands prior to handling them to preserve their near-flawless condition.
Wade has started selling the items and has already flogged some of the Pokémon cards, earning $6,000 – or around £4,400. After purchasing the unit for $2,000 – the equivalent of around £1,500 – he has already made a profit of close to £3,000.
Wade also uncovered boxes of Nintendo DS consoles, Game Boys, PlayStations, an Atari game console and controllers hand-labelled with their model numbers, as well as countless retro games – with some sealed in their original plastic.
While digging through the stacks of gaming consoles, he said to viewers: ‘Who’d have thought? This is crazy.
‘Maybe we should play some Mario.’
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