Top 12 Surprising Treasures: Unearthing Unexpected Discoveries

1. Atari’s “E.T.” Video Games Unearthed from New Mexico Landfill

Location: New Mexico's Alamogordo Year Found: 2014 Estimated Value: $5–$10 million* There are many twists and turns in this shocking tale. Video game developer Atari discovered in the fall of 1983 that its much-maligned E.T. The video game Extra-Terrestrial was a complete failure. Atari therefore made the decision to address its excess inventory, and it covertly buried a large portion of the stock in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Atari's \E.T.\" Video Games Unearthed from New Mexico Landfill" /wikipedia.org Nobody thought the E.T. game had been that big of a disaster, so the "Atari Dump" became the stuff of urban legends. That is, until 2014, when an investigation in Alamogordo showed that the Atari Dump was, in fact, authentic from the start. The wisest course of action, instead of attempting to sell millions of copies of Atari's game, was to bury them in the New Mexico desert.