Speaker 1: It's nineteen ninety nine and a twenty something writer named
Speaker 1: Clive Young is living in Brooklyn, New York. Like most
Speaker 1: people in this tale, he's into Atari, but by now,
Speaker 1: being into Atari is a retro thing, not a cutting
Speaker 1: edge thing, and for Clive in particular, it's also a
Speaker 1: budget thing.
Speaker 2: Jen X grows up. You know, I moved out and
Speaker 2: I was absolutely broke as anything because a big recession,
Speaker 2: just as you know you're getting economically established in the world,
Speaker 2: I guess is the best way to put it. So
Speaker 2: I came across my old Atari in my parents' basement
Speaker 2: and I was like, all right, well, you know that
Speaker 2: doesn't cost anything.
Speaker 1: As you've probably guessed, that's Clive. He was an Atari
Speaker 1: gamer from way back, and when he has to keep
Speaker 1: a tight grip on his wallet, that dusty old console
Speaker 1: suddenly seems interesting.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't afford to go out, you can't
Speaker 2: do anything, but you can sit around the apartment and
Speaker 2: play old Atari.
Speaker 1: One of the best plays, says to find old games
Speaker 1: are thrift stores. Remember this was before games were ultra
Speaker 1: valuable collector's items, sealed in plastic cases and selling for
Speaker 1: thousands on eBay. Old games were mostly considered junk. So
Speaker 1: Clive went to thrift shops browsing for old, sorry vintage
Speaker 1: Atari titles. But then he had a reason to walk
Speaker 1: into a new shop in a different part of the state.
Speaker 3: Love.
Speaker 2: I was living in Brooklyn at the time, but I
Speaker 2: was dating this girl who she lived out in Long Island,
Speaker 2: which you know is the birthplace of American suburbia, and
Speaker 2: I would go visit her on the weekends and go
Speaker 2: out to all the garage sales because I was if
Speaker 2: you're living on an extraordinarily limited budget, such as I was,
Speaker 2: and I would come across all these old Atari games
Speaker 2: that were like twenty five cents fifty cents. I wound
Speaker 2: up collecting literally hundreds of Atari games. I think before
Speaker 2: I basically quit, I probably had the better part of
Speaker 2: probably four hundred and fifty different games.
Speaker 1: That's how a thrifty Clive finds himself at Edley Electronics
Speaker 1: on Long Island, which was less of a thrift store
Speaker 1: and more of a junk store full of well loved
Speaker 1: electronics gear. Think of it like a best buy, only
Speaker 1: everything is cheap and probably missing a plug.
Speaker 2: Me once every two three months, I'd stick my head
Speaker 2: in there and that particular day, I got a call
Speaker 2: from a friend who also knew the place, and he said, oh,
Speaker 2: they got some great Atari stuff in there, going so yeah,
Speaker 2: I stopped by. He had already swiped some of the
Speaker 2: really good stuff that I never found, like the Atari
Speaker 2: Gremlins and things like that.
Speaker 1: Gremlins based on the movie is one of the more
Speaker 1: rare Atari titles. It would be a good find. But
Speaker 1: that's not what Clive sees. As he rummages through this
Speaker 1: box of Atari, he spot something odd. It's an envelope.
Speaker 2: There was a letter envelope just tucked in the side
Speaker 2: of a shoe box, and I opened it and I
Speaker 2: found those photos.
Speaker 1: At first, Clive isn't sure what those photos depict, but
Speaker 1: they turn out to be an amazing discovery, far more
Speaker 1: interesting than an old Gremlins game. Even though seventeen years
Speaker 1: had passed since the Sword Quest titles had first been released,
Speaker 1: there had never been any absolute confirmation that all five
Speaker 1: prizes for the contest had been made. It was possible
Speaker 1: Atari just made them as needed, and only two were
Speaker 1: confirmed to have been handed out. Maybe there wasn't a
Speaker 1: sword or a philosopher Stone after all. Maybe fans were
Speaker 1: chasing something that didn't even exist. But as Clive begins
Speaker 1: sifting through the old photos, he realizes that he's holding
Speaker 1: a part of Atari history.
Speaker 2: I could tell it clearly has said something to do
Speaker 2: with the actual company, because one of the photos has
Speaker 2: a giant Atari logo up on the wall in the background.
Speaker 1: Clive keeps flipping through the photos. There, among snapshots of
Speaker 1: the Fireworld contest and some very retro hairstyles, is a
Speaker 1: clear shot of the grand prize, the Sword of Ultimate
Speaker 1: Sorcery in ety Electronics. Clive is holding real, irrefutable proof
Speaker 1: the sword for the contest, which has never surfaced, is real.
Speaker 1: But what do you do with this information? And more importantly,
Speaker 1: how do you make sure you leave the store with
Speaker 1: the first and maybe only image of the most sought
Speaker 1: after prize in gaming history. After all, no one said
Speaker 1: those photos were for sale for iHeartRadio. This is the
Speaker 1: legend of sword Quest. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and
Speaker 1: this is episode five Stay Gold. When Clive found those
Speaker 1: photos and his accidental archaeological dig at Edley Electronics, he
Speaker 1: was resurrecting memories not just of sword Quest, but Atari
Speaker 1: as a whole. It had struggled in the intervening years,
Speaker 1: changing hands multiple times, and was constantly in a foot
Speaker 1: race with other video game manufacturers. Atari, like sword Quest
Speaker 1: had imploded.
Speaker 2: It's also a little bit of like a Hubris thing, like,
Speaker 2: look at this big contest that they had planned and
Speaker 2: these big prizes that they had planned, and it never
Speaker 2: quite comes to conclusion. So it's almost like a metaphor
Speaker 2: for the industry and Atari itself in a way.
Speaker 1: But finding moldy photos of a gaming contest seems kind
Speaker 1: of unnecessary. Shouldn't someone have been taking photos or video? Well, No,
Speaker 1: Atari had what you might call a poor institutional memory.
Speaker 1: There wasn't much of a paper trail that was retained
Speaker 1: for the contest when Atari changed hands in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: It only obfuscated things further. That's why Clive's find was
Speaker 1: such a big deal, and it's why sword Quest remains
Speaker 1: such an enigmatic event. No one was taking notes. Each
Speaker 1: of the photos tell a little bit of the story.
Speaker 1: There's Michael ride Out, one of only two winners, standing
Speaker 1: over his prize, the chalice, which is still in its
Speaker 1: ornate glass case. The curtains of the hotel's ballroom are
Speaker 1: open behind him letting in light. There's an image that
Speaker 1: has row after row of players, an older woman pacing
Speaker 1: in the space between them, like a stern headmistress at
Speaker 1: a boarding school. Another one has glimpses of other contestants,
Speaker 1: all wearing a red Fireworld t shirt that atari probably
Speaker 1: handed out like a team uniform. There's a close up
Speaker 1: of the chalice, a stern man standing sentry next to it,
Speaker 1: and of course the sword. It sits at an angle
Speaker 1: on a small table, a white cloth underneath it, a
Speaker 1: gold and jewel encrusted hilt sparkling. Even though the photo
Speaker 1: itself isn't too sharp. Maybe some people thought the sword
Speaker 1: would be cheap, looking like a movie price, but it's radiant,
Speaker 1: it's well crafted. To a lot of people, this would
Speaker 1: all look vaguely weird, like a Dungeons and Dragons game
Speaker 1: gone high tech. But Clive knew a lot of the background.
Speaker 1: Sword Quest had been a part of his childhood. Like
Speaker 1: many gamers, he had screamed in frustration while trying to
Speaker 1: win these prizes.
Speaker 2: When I was like thirteen, fourteen years old. I mean,
Speaker 2: that was big selling point of the game was get
Speaker 2: it and you'll figure it out, and you could win.
Speaker 2: You know, this cool stuff, and of course it's all
Speaker 2: based on clues in the comic book and this and that,
Speaker 2: but you know, being a fourteen year old kid, the
Speaker 2: comic book gets torn up and of course lost in
Speaker 2: the house within like you know, a week.
Speaker 1: Finding the photos at Edley Electronics was about as likely
Speaker 1: as winning the contest. It was more of a junkyard
Speaker 1: for electronics. Personal effects didn't really belong there.
Speaker 2: It was where electronics went to die and where hobbyist
Speaker 2: electronics went to die. So there's you know, half of
Speaker 2: a model airplane, there's a couple of broken turned there's
Speaker 2: boxes of old tubes, any random random and I cannot
Speaker 2: stress random enough, like heating coils of just somebody would
Speaker 2: need it somehow. All this stuff would wind up in
Speaker 2: the metal shelves at this store.
Speaker 1: Clearly, someone probably a contestant, stuck the photos in a
Speaker 1: giant box of Atari games and forgot about them. Then
Speaker 1: they were donated or maybe sold for a song and
Speaker 1: forgotten until Clive showed up, And it was serendipitous that
Speaker 1: he did. Whoever ultimately picked up the photos needed to
Speaker 1: know about sword quest, about golden chalices and swords. Otherwise
Speaker 1: the photos would probably be pitched into the trash, and
Speaker 1: to this day, atari collectors would be debating over whether
Speaker 1: the sword had ever even been made. Clive knew this
Speaker 1: was important, but they weren't in his possession just yet.
Speaker 1: According to Clive, the clerks at Edley couldn't completely be
Speaker 1: trusted not to give someone a hard time. That's because
Speaker 1: the store was manned by two cranky older men who
Speaker 1: resembled Statler and Waldorf from the Muppet Show.
Speaker 2: It was a strange place. It was about the size
Speaker 2: of the small supermarket. It was run by these two
Speaker 2: old guys who sat behind the counter, and they just
Speaker 2: had duop playing all day, and all they did was bicker,
Speaker 2: bicker with each other, bicker with their customers, the whole bit.
Speaker 1: The question was should Clive try to slip the photos
Speaker 1: past them or keep them in sight. If he showed
Speaker 1: them off, maybe they'd hesitate, ask him why he's looking
Speaker 1: to buy someone else's personal photos and demand he hand
Speaker 1: them over, or worse.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. If I bring it up to the counter,
Speaker 2: the two cranky guys are either going to say I
Speaker 2: can't have it, or they're going to say, oh, that's
Speaker 2: twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: Remember Clive's disposable income was minimal, so we opted for
Speaker 1: a little subversion. With a deep breath, he went up
Speaker 1: to the counter.
Speaker 2: You know, it's some random photos that looked like they
Speaker 2: came out some of these photo albums. There wasn't a
Speaker 2: lot of thought put into it. I just sort of
Speaker 2: put in a pile of stuff that I was buying
Speaker 2: from them, like with the you know, manuals or whatever,
Speaker 2: and they didn't even glance at it. I probably bought
Speaker 2: the whole pile for like five bucks, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Clive went back home to Brooklyn and thought about what
Speaker 1: he should do. He could, in theory, scan them himself
Speaker 1: and find someplace online to post them, but he also
Speaker 1: needed them to be vetted in some way. He thought
Speaker 1: he knew what they were, but he wasn't sure. Remember
Speaker 1: this was nineteen ninety nine, and it wasn't so easy
Speaker 1: to just look up information about a retrogaming contest, so.
Speaker 2: It's like, all right, this has to be some sort
Speaker 2: of officially sanctioned thing. At the time, there was a really,
Speaker 2: at least in the very small world of Atari fans,
Speaker 2: a big zine called twenty six hundred Connection. So I
Speaker 2: sent the photos to them because I figured they'll know
Speaker 2: what the heck this is, you know, I mean, I
Speaker 2: had a pretty good idea, all right, it must have
Speaker 2: to do with that contest.
Speaker 1: Twenty six hundred. Connection was a fanzine or fan magazine
Speaker 1: for Atari fans. They published the photos and the Atari
Speaker 1: fan community was intrigued. The photos also wound up online, naturally,
Speaker 1: and Kurt Vendel, the late Atari historian, shot Clive an email.
Speaker 2: I remember I got an email from asking, Hey, would
Speaker 2: you like to donate these to my museum? And the
Speaker 2: thought was no, but.
Speaker 1: Clive wanted to hang on to the photos.
Speaker 2: Finding the photos was one of the best moments that
Speaker 2: I had out of the collecting, because a lot of
Speaker 2: the collecting, particularly at that time, I mean, the atmosphere
Speaker 2: and the attitude may have changed, but a lot of
Speaker 2: the collecting really came down to, hey, look what I found.
Speaker 2: I have it. You don't, whether online or meeting people
Speaker 2: in person or whatever. And you know, there's a certain
Speaker 2: amount of okay, bragging rights, absolutely, but you know it's
Speaker 2: maybe not the best look on anyone. And I was
Speaker 2: as guilty of that one as anybody else.
Speaker 1: There was some pride in making a discovery but Clive
Speaker 1: also thought the pictures were a kind of public record,
Speaker 1: and seeing them in twenty six hundred Connection gave them
Speaker 1: a kind of validity. The fine reignited conversation about the
Speaker 1: fate of the sword quest prizes, and it killed the
Speaker 1: theory that Atari had only had the prizes made prior
Speaker 1: to each contest. If they made the sword the final prize,
Speaker 1: then they almost certainly made all of them. Here's rus
Speaker 1: Perry Junior, who edited twenty six hundred Connection.
Speaker 4: I remember back in the day some people speculated that
Speaker 4: they weren't actually making the prizes until like right before
Speaker 4: the contest the championship. But the problem is, we've seen
Speaker 4: the picture of the sword. It does give you an
Speaker 4: indication that maybe they did actually make them all at
Speaker 4: the beginning. So the theories about them, like especially the
Speaker 4: Philosopher's Stone the last one, probably didn't exist. Well, it
Speaker 4: might have, especially with a contest. I know, again, there's
Speaker 4: so many legal restrictions. It is possible they had to
Speaker 4: actually have the promised prizes forehand legally before they could
Speaker 4: announce the contest and the prizes that.
Speaker 1: Could be true legally, Atari might not have been able
Speaker 1: to promise prizes that weren't yet made either way, two
Speaker 1: were awarded and accounted for the talisman and chalice, and
Speaker 1: three were not the crown, the Philosopher's Stone, and the sword.
Speaker 1: The sword at least was now a confirmed physical object,
Speaker 1: but that still doesn't account for what happened to them
Speaker 1: When the contest was canceled with the sword reel. It
Speaker 1: made one prevailing theory much stronger. That theory was presented
Speaker 1: by Kurt Vendell, who once insisted that after speaking at
Speaker 1: length with the Tari employees, he had determined their fate.
Speaker 1: Could Atari have simply sent the prizes back to where
Speaker 1: they were made at the Franklin Mint, like returned them
Speaker 1: for a refund. Could the Franklin Mint have come back
Speaker 1: into possess of the prizes. Okay, it's a theory, let's
Speaker 1: test it out. But we know you're wondering, what the
Speaker 1: hell is the Franklin Mint.
Speaker 5: The American dollar is easy, but if you want the
Speaker 5: Russian ruble or Japan's five hundred yin or say shells
Speaker 5: ten rupees. If you want the coins that are legal
Speaker 5: tender in over one hundred countries, you can either travel
Speaker 5: the world or telephone the Franklin Mint for coin sets
Speaker 5: of all nations. The Franklin Mint has done it for you,
Speaker 5: worked with central banks and government.
Speaker 1: It's human nature to collect things. Maybe it's books, maybe
Speaker 1: it's comics or baseball cards, atari games, rubber bands. We
Speaker 1: hoard things, hopefully not in a way that lands us
Speaker 1: on television for all sorts of reasons. The Franklin Mint
Speaker 1: turned that urge into a multi million dollar business. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, a man named Joseph Siegel took notice
Speaker 1: of two events, the death of General Douglas MacArthur and
Speaker 1: news reports of a run on silver dollars. Siegel realized
Speaker 1: that if people were so hungry for silver coins, maybe
Speaker 1: he could get them to buy commemorative silver medals, like say,
Speaker 1: one depicting General MacArthur. This led to the creation of
Speaker 1: the National Commemorative Society. But the National Commemorative Society needed
Speaker 1: someone to make their commemoratives. Supposedly, Seagull tried a few options,
Speaker 1: but wasn't happy with their quality, so he founded a
Speaker 1: new company called General Numismatics, with a division called Franklin Mint. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Franklin Mint became the dominant part of General Numismatics, which
Speaker 1: would soon change its name to reflect that, and among
Speaker 1: many other lines of business, was selling their own limited
Speaker 1: runs of coins and medals to collectors. Tell people you're
Speaker 1: only going to make ten thousand Queen Elizabeth the Second
Speaker 1: coins and give them a deadline to order, then watch
Speaker 1: them develop a nineteen sixties version of Fomo the fear
Speaker 1: of missing out. This strategy worked really well early on.
Speaker 1: Joseph only made the coins after he had gotten the
Speaker 1: orders and was in no danger of getting stuck with
Speaker 1: unsold inventory. The themes were endless, History's most Famous Women,
Speaker 1: the history of the Catholic Church of Richard Nixon commemorative medal,
Speaker 1: because otherwise Richard Nixon might.
Speaker 5: Be forgotten, because people have got to know whether or
Speaker 5: not their president's a crook.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.
Speaker 1: The Mint developed a devoted clientele, and their ideas got
Speaker 1: more and more ambitious, maybe too ambitious. One employee, overwhelmed
Speaker 1: with all the Mint's projects, was said to have keeled
Speaker 1: over at his desk, dead of a heart attack. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, the company struck a deal with astronauts
Speaker 1: Alan Shephard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Russa on the Apollo
Speaker 1: fourteen Moon mission to carry a payload of silver medals
Speaker 1: into space. The idea was that the silver could then
Speaker 1: be used to make commemorative coins, with the pitch being
Speaker 1: that the material had been outside the Earth's atmosphere and
Speaker 1: near the lunar surface. It was actually a pretty clever conceit.
Speaker 1: The problem was that the Franklin Mint never bothered to
Speaker 1: get NASA's permission. The agreement was between the Mint and
Speaker 1: the astronauts, and while they weren't explicitly compensated, the astronauts
Speaker 1: got to keep many of the two hundred medals they
Speaker 1: carried into space. Some were given out to friends and family.
Speaker 1: Of those the Mint got back, they used many of
Speaker 1: them to make into mini coins. The stunt actually helped
Speaker 1: to change NASA's protocols on bringing personal items into space.
Speaker 1: It's not often a company changes space policy, but the
Speaker 1: Mint managed it. However. The Mint's biggest obstacle came later
Speaker 1: on its home planet. In nineteen seventy eight, the CBS
Speaker 1: television news magazine show Six to Minutes devoted a segment
Speaker 1: to the Franklin Mint, and, like most profiles of businesses
Speaker 1: on sixty minutes. At the time, it wasn't glowing. The
Speaker 1: show pointed out the fallacies of creating artificial demand by
Speaker 1: limiting production runs and then having collectors expect those items
Speaker 1: will increase in value. According to the report, many of
Speaker 1: their collectible items were only worth their melt value, that is,
Speaker 1: the intrinsic value of the raw material. There was no
Speaker 1: premium placed on the fact that the coins had images
Speaker 1: of famous historical or political figures, or that they had
Speaker 1: been to the moon. After the report, the stock price
Speaker 1: for the mint dropped by a dollar. The shine on
Speaker 1: the mint seemed to dull. It was time for the
Speaker 1: Franklin Mint to pivot. Joseph Siegel had left back in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four and later started QVC, one of the
Speaker 1: first home shopping channels. Striking coins was no longer the
Speaker 1: windfall it had been, but the idea of something being
Speaker 1: instantly and purposely rare was still viable. The mint itself
Speaker 1: needed a makeover, and in nineteen eighty one it got it.
Speaker 1: That's when Warner Communications bought the company. They were able
Speaker 1: to because Atari's success had filled their bank account and
Speaker 1: made it possible to acquire other businesses. No longer was
Speaker 1: the Mint appealing exclusively to coin collectors like Warner and
Speaker 1: even Atari itself. They were branching out into pop culture
Speaker 1: as a whole. Over the years, they'd try their hand
Speaker 1: at handsome leather bound book collections of literary classics. Star
Speaker 1: Trek fans could buy a replica of the Starship Enterprise.
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz fans could procure Dorothy dolls. One tiny
Speaker 1: ufo was accompanied by soil taken from Roswell, New Mexico. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Mint sold dirt and did pretty well. Civil War
Speaker 1: Chess sets, premium Monopoly game boards with tiny gold pieces.
Speaker 1: There were figurines and glass sculptures, Elvis Presley offerings, and
Speaker 1: miniature rolls voices. These were premium items made with durable,
Speaker 1: expensive materials, and they cost money, sometimes hundreds of dollars,
Speaker 1: and they encouraged a lot of collected all brand loyalty
Speaker 1: collectors filled houses and cabinets with Franklin Mint stuff. It
Speaker 1: was a pre Beanie baby craze. So the Mint did
Speaker 1: another clever thing. They made it possible to purchase their
Speaker 1: collectibles in installments. Maybe it was hard for someone to
Speaker 1: grab a porcelain butterfly bell with twenty four carrot gold
Speaker 1: for sixty five dollars, But what if it was in
Speaker 1: three easy payments of twenty one dollars sixty seven cents
Speaker 1: plus shipping and handling.
Speaker 5: Of course, if money talks, here is endless conversation for
Speaker 5: your family to treasure now and in years to come.
Speaker 5: For a handsome hard bound cases, accompany the collection for
Speaker 5: storage and easy reference. In charge and start your collection.
Speaker 1: With the strategy of offering affordable art worked. By nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, just ten percent of the Mint's earnings were
Speaker 1: from minted items. The rest of the four hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars in sales came from mass produced art. Inside their
Speaker 1: manufacturing facility in Waua, Pennsylvania, were hundreds of employees and
Speaker 1: technicians handling and smelting all manner of materials. A vault
Speaker 1: on the factory floor contained the most precious materials, diamonds, rubies.
Speaker 1: Workers were checked coming and going to make sure they
Speaker 1: weren't leaving any heavier than when they came in. While
Speaker 1: many of the products were sold in limited runs, some
Speaker 1: were one of a kind. In nineteen eighty one, the
Speaker 1: Mint made a golden key with a value of thirty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars at the behest of Stanley Home Products,
Speaker 1: which wanted to give it away during the company's fiftieth
Speaker 1: anniversary to one of their star employees. The other major
Speaker 1: project was, of course, sword Quest. The Franklin Mint and
Speaker 1: Atari already had a kind of working relationship because the
Speaker 1: Mint had its own publishing arm, printing its own magazine
Speaker 1: for collectors. Warner tasked it with publishing Atari Age, the
Speaker 1: fan publication for all Things Atari. The Mint even sold
Speaker 1: Atari consoles to employees at its company store. Warner took
Speaker 1: it a step further, tasking the Mint with making the
Speaker 1: sword Quest prizes. Normally, this is where we'd interview the
Speaker 1: technician or artist who made the prizes, like the blacksmith
Speaker 1: who crafted the sword, and it's possible they're out there somewhere.
Speaker 1: But according to Robert Murphy, a renowned sculptor and artist
Speaker 1: who spent fourteen years at the Mint, over twenty two
Speaker 1: hundred people worked there in the early nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 1: the people who labored on the prizes may not have
Speaker 1: had any idea what they were working on. Robert told
Speaker 1: us it could have even been him. This is what
Speaker 1: he said to us via email.
Speaker 6: Thinking back on working in the pewter department at the Mint.
Speaker 6: I myself may have worked on one of these pieces.
Speaker 6: We never had any idea where a particular model that
Speaker 6: we made was heading. Each job had an individual work
Speaker 6: number assigned to it. We would have a design sketch
Speaker 6: or rough prototype delivered to our work area, not having
Speaker 6: any idea where the final model was going to. Items
Speaker 6: like swords often had pewter handguards that ended up being
Speaker 6: gold plated and set with stones. We never had a
Speaker 6: clue where the final product ended up.
Speaker 1: It's likely the prizes went through several departments at the
Speaker 1: Mint with no one knowing the ultimate outcome of what
Speaker 1: it was they were working on. It was almost like
Speaker 1: government work, no one person knowing everything. Given the value
Speaker 1: of the prizes, it may have been a way to
Speaker 1: keep employees from being tempted to, you know, conquer quest
Speaker 1: by simply running off with the treasures. But they were
Speaker 1: crafts people, not just workers on some collectible's mass assembly line.
Speaker 1: Roberts said his co workers were quote old school craftsmen,
Speaker 1: at least a couple from prestigious European engraving and jewelry backgrounds.
Speaker 1: All of them were miles ahead of me in terms
Speaker 1: of model making skills unquote. That was part of the
Speaker 1: Mint's approach in the nineteen sixties. They had hired the
Speaker 1: well respected engraver Gilroy Roberts, who previously worked in the
Speaker 1: US Mint, as their chief engraver. The Sword Quest pieces
Speaker 1: were made with real care. We know the prizes began
Speaker 1: to leave Pennsylvania no later than nineteen eighty three. That's
Speaker 1: because at least one the talisman had to be on
Speaker 1: display for the first contest, held in May of that
Speaker 1: year in Sunnyvale, California. Thanks to Clive, we know the
Speaker 1: sword exists, and thanks to winner Stephen Bell's check stub,
Speaker 1: which he was enough to share with us, we know
Speaker 1: the contest ended without the remaining three prizes being handed
Speaker 1: out in August nineteen eighty six, and we know the
Speaker 1: late Atari historian Kurt Vendel insisted the rest of the
Speaker 1: prizes had been returned to the Mint. Kurt wrote about it,
Speaker 1: and other Atari historians have said similar things. Here's Ken
Speaker 1: van Merzbergen, an Atari fan in programmer who knew Kurt.
Speaker 3: He talked to a lot of people at the Franklin
Speaker 3: Mint who had worked there back in the day. And
Speaker 3: we believe that they were actually sent back, probably on
Speaker 3: order from Warner to recoup the cost of this The
Speaker 3: sorder with fifty thousand, but each individual prize was worth
Speaker 3: twenty five k at the time.
Speaker 1: But Kurt never related to Ken who exactly he had
Speaker 1: spoken with.
Speaker 3: No, he never shared that information with me. And unfortunately,
Speaker 3: as you know that information is now lost.
Speaker 1: A lot of things relating to sword Quest turn up missing.
Speaker 1: But if the Franklin Mint theory of reclaimed treasure is true,
Speaker 1: then what happened next is enough to put a stake
Speaker 1: or sword through your heart. It's a tragedy, one even
Speaker 1: worse than paying one hundred dollars for Elvis Presley's pink
Speaker 1: Cadillac and miniature. For years, the Franklin Mint's facilities were
Speaker 1: a tremendous labor force in Pennsylvania. It employed a large
Speaker 1: number of people who needed to assist in delivering Star
Speaker 1: Trek collectibles to ravenous fans. But the facility also had
Speaker 1: another purpose. Tucked inside the circular building was a museum
Speaker 1: devoted to everything Franklin Mint. Every year, up to one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people would enter the doors of the museum.
Speaker 1: The visitors area was a shrine to everything the Mint
Speaker 1: had built over the years, not only in collectors' coins,
Speaker 1: but their limited run items, thousands and thousands of purposeful
Speaker 1: art pieces, including expensive Faberge eggs and tiny Harley Das Davidson's.
Speaker 1: If the prizes were returned to the Mint, it's possible
Speaker 1: they could have wound up here. Inside are raiders of
Speaker 1: the lost Ark style tribute to all things Franklin Mint.
Speaker 1: A gleaming crown, a towering stone, a sharp sword encased
Speaker 1: behind glass, all monuments to the Mint's ingenuity and craftsmanship,
Speaker 1: nestled near frank Sinatra and Scarlett O'Harra dolls, or a
Speaker 1: John Wayne commemorative dinner plate. Maybe a tiny placard advising
Speaker 1: visitors of their significance in Franklin Mint history. Here'sit's the
Speaker 1: crown of video gaming Royalty. No player ever deemed worthy
Speaker 1: enough to wear it. Here hangs on the sword, no
Speaker 1: sword quester ever strong enough to wield it. But the
Speaker 1: Franklin Mint Museum was no mere museum. In fitting with
Speaker 1: the company's overall mission of commercial art, it was also
Speaker 1: a gift shop. Most everything in the museum was for sale.
Speaker 1: If the sword quest piece is wound up here. It's
Speaker 1: highly possible a strident Franklin Mint die hard collector would
Speaker 1: have been eager to possess a one of a kind piece.
Speaker 1: Never Mind it was made for an Atari contest. It
Speaker 1: would have been the most limited of additions, an addition
Speaker 1: of one. Yes, the items would have been pricey, but
Speaker 1: Mint fans weren't all installment buyers. One replica of an
Speaker 1: Egyptian necklace went for ninety five hundred dollars. A diamond
Speaker 1: encrusted Star of the North wristwatch went for ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: There was a strong demand for swords too. The Mint
Speaker 1: struck blades inspired by Charlemagne. The Japanese Samurai Camelot, a
Speaker 1: bejeweled sword ready for wall display, would not have been
Speaker 1: out of place. That's one possibility. If the Mint took
Speaker 1: the prizes back, someone could also have made the decision
Speaker 1: to route them elsewhere to one of the Mint's growing
Speaker 1: numbers of retail shops around the country. These boutiques were
Speaker 1: full of Franklin Mint merchandise. Someone somewhere could have packed
Speaker 1: up the items in newspaper and nailed them shut inside
Speaker 1: a wooden crate, shuttled them to a Franklin mint shop
Speaker 1: and lost any trace of their existence. There's one more
Speaker 1: potential outcome of returning the prizes to the Mint, and
Speaker 1: it's probably the most frustrating of them all. When Atari
Speaker 1: made the decision to cancel sword Quest in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: they still had a legal obligation to offer a settlement
Speaker 1: to the players who had earned a spot in the
Speaker 1: finals and a chance to play for the sword. So
Speaker 1: Stephen Bell and Michael Ridout, the two finalists, received a
Speaker 1: check for fifteen thousand dollars each. The other players due
Speaker 1: to play in a water world contest the third game
Speaker 1: in the series, got two thousand or twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars each. So in a world where Atari was now
Speaker 1: strapped for cash and conserving every dollar, where would that
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars come from? Do you remember what happened
Speaker 1: to those Astronaut coins. There's a version of this story
Speaker 1: where a tar sorry, desperate to end this contest, winds
Speaker 1: up selling the prizes back to the Franklin Mint, which
Speaker 1: pays them money for the raw materials, money that then
Speaker 1: goes to paying the finalists. The Mint, which has no
Speaker 1: need for unique guitari prize items, considers it money well
Speaker 1: spent for silver, gold and jewels. The silver and gold
Speaker 1: is melted down, repurposed into any number of other collectibles.
Speaker 1: Someone's letter opener made from the reclaimed silver of the sword,
Speaker 1: and with that the Sword Quest prizes quite literally vanish
Speaker 1: from existence. Here's Ken van Merzbergen again.
Speaker 3: Well, I think is that all the stones are probably
Speaker 3: removed and repurposed, and the gold and silver were melted
Speaker 3: down to turn into other product because they were still
Speaker 3: owned by the Franklin Mint at that time, and I
Speaker 3: think they belong to Franklin Mint.
Speaker 1: It's a sobering thought, like a copy of Action Comics
Speaker 1: number one being fed into a paper shredder. And it's
Speaker 1: certainly possible. It makes financial sense for a tarorry, but
Speaker 1: there are some important details to consider. Martin Goldberg, an
Speaker 1: Atari historian who worked with the lank Kurt Vendel, later
Speaker 1: said Warner executive Manny Gerard told him the prize as
Speaker 1: went back to the Mint, but when we recently spoke
Speaker 1: with Manny, he couldn't corroborate that. Here's Manny.
Speaker 7: I gotta tell you, I don't even remember the name.
Speaker 7: But then again, I don't remember a name very much,
Speaker 7: any boy, But I have no recollection of any of
Speaker 7: that I don't remember, so I certainly don't remember the prize.
Speaker 1: It's a test of anyone's memory, and we're not saying
Speaker 1: his lack of recall proves anything, only that we asked
Speaker 1: someone who might have known where the prizes went or
Speaker 1: if they were returned to the Mint, and he just
Speaker 1: doesn't know. Keep in mind too, that Manny left Warner
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four, two years before the contest was
Speaker 1: cut short. The story has other holes in it. Back
Speaker 1: in the eighties, Atari wasn't the only ailing business in
Speaker 1: the Warner portfolio. The Franklin Mint was another, and so
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five, Warner sold off a majority stake
Speaker 1: in the Mint to Stuart and Linda Resnik, a married
Speaker 1: couple who happened to be fabulously wealthy. Their company, American
Speaker 1: Protection Industries, had made a fortune in home security, and
Speaker 1: Linda wanted to get into the collectibles game. The Mint
Speaker 1: was theirs for about one hundred and sixty million dollars,
Speaker 1: probably not payable in three easy installments. That means Atari
Speaker 1: was far removed from having any kind of inside track
Speaker 1: with the Franklin Mint. Atari had been sold off in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, the Mint in nineteen eighty five. The
Speaker 1: contest was officially canceled in nineteen eighty six. The two
Speaker 1: were no longer corporate partners and any dealings or relationships
Speaker 1: they had were likely dissolved. So why would Atari approach
Speaker 1: the Mint and why would the Mint offer to lend
Speaker 1: a hand without any corporate connection. We were able to
Speaker 1: contact Stuart Resnik, who was in charge of the Mint
Speaker 1: during those years, and he has no memory whatsoever of
Speaker 1: Atari sending the Mint a crate full of video game
Speaker 1: prizes to be sold off for fifty thousand dollars or more.
Speaker 1: That's not remotely definitive proof it didn't happen, But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, it does seem like the kind of
Speaker 1: thing you might remember. It's hard to believe that Atari
Speaker 1: would willingly ship off the prizes back to Pennsylvania, particularly
Speaker 1: when it took the company two years to reach what
Speaker 1: they felt was a satisfactory resolution to the contest. If
Speaker 1: Stephen Bell and Michael Rideout had refused, it's possible they
Speaker 1: would have had to see the contest through, and if
Speaker 1: they did, they couldn't have given them a bunch of
Speaker 1: melted silver and gold in a puddle. The prizes would
Speaker 1: have needed to survive at least until the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, well passed the mint's new ownership and
Speaker 1: Manny's tenure. There's also Robert Murphy, the sculptor we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier time at the Mint. He says he never heard
Speaker 1: of any kind of repurposing program for materials, but he
Speaker 1: did add that sometimes unwanted or unused items were sold
Speaker 1: to employees at a discounted price. There were trailer sales
Speaker 1: in the Mint's parking lot where Robert says workers could
Speaker 1: buy things for pennies on the dollar. Of course, Robert
Speaker 1: can't say for certain he saw the sword Quest prizes
Speaker 1: during one of these sales, but he does remember what
Speaker 1: he called some camelot type items, ornate products from Arthurian legend,
Speaker 1: like swords and chalices, things that could have easily been
Speaker 1: the sword Quest prizes on display at the museum, sold
Speaker 1: to a visitor or employee, sent to a retail store,
Speaker 1: or just simply destroyed all possible fates if the prizes
Speaker 1: found their way back to the Franklin Mint. That seemed
Speaker 1: dire and final The Mint's plant is gone now, and
Speaker 1: so is the museum, raised and paved over in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: though it's changed hands several times since the Resinus bought
Speaker 1: it in nineteen eighty five. The Mint itself still exists,
Speaker 1: pedaling coins, toy cars, and patriotic coffee mugs online, but
Speaker 1: there's nowhere it could hang a sword if it still
Speaker 1: had one. There's one more detail worth mentioning. Of the
Speaker 1: three remaining prizes, one of them was the Philosopher's Stone.
Speaker 1: While it did have a gold display case, it was
Speaker 1: made of white jade, and you can't melt down jade.
Speaker 1: For a long time, it's been accepted that Clive Young
Speaker 1: discovered the only known photo of the sword. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, all these years later, someone did take a
Speaker 1: glamour shot of the sword a second photo. In reporting
Speaker 1: this story, we found several newspapers from October nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two that had a picture in it. An unnamed technician
Speaker 1: from the Franklin Mint is pictured, hoped in a white,
Speaker 1: clean suit as though he were working in a laboratory.
Speaker 1: He's cradling the sword of Ultimate Sorcery, It's hilt visible.
Speaker 1: The caption says it was struck at the mint for atari,
Speaker 1: along with the chalice, crown and talisman. It was a
Speaker 1: photo distributed for promotional use, Lost and forgotten. The man
Speaker 1: is looking at something that is soon to disappear, but
Speaker 1: something that absolutely positively existed. This photo, like the ones
Speaker 1: Clive found, is a little like a tiny fossilized bone
Speaker 1: from a creature thought to be extinct. The images of
Speaker 1: the prizes are incredibly rare. Most exist only as illustrations
Speaker 1: in gaming magazines. Without them, it's likely no one would
Speaker 1: be entirely convinced the prizes had ever been real at all.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what the photographer at the contest wanted, proof
Speaker 1: not just of the prizes, but of their experience.
Speaker 2: Here's Clive, a good enough player that you wound up
Speaker 2: getting to be in this contest. When you have someone
Speaker 2: take a photo of yourself, or even just take a
Speaker 2: photo yourself like next to the story, it as opposed
Speaker 2: to just the sword by itself or something. So it's
Speaker 2: sort of an interesting thing of what's not in the photos,
Speaker 2: which kind of makes me think maybe, like you know,
Speaker 2: there were a couple of more personal photos that maybe
Speaker 2: in somebody's photo albums somewhere in Levittown. But these were
Speaker 2: the ones that somebody whoever it was, just sort of
Speaker 2: tucked into an envelope and kept with their stuff. The
Speaker 2: photos kind of look almost like photos that you take
Speaker 2: is proof if you were a kid back then, you know,
Speaker 2: like picks or it didn't happen. Yeah, this is really
Speaker 2: what it looks like. Yes, that's the guy who wanted
Speaker 2: Yes there really was a chalice. My extrapolating with that
Speaker 2: actually knowing what I'm talking about, These photos strike me
Speaker 2: as these were the photos you take to school to
Speaker 2: say this is what I did on my summer vacation.
Speaker 1: Today, the contest would be all over social media. Someone
Speaker 1: would be live streaming it. But then these photos might
Speaker 1: be the only tangible remnants of that experience. We've managed
Speaker 1: to speak to a few of the contestants, but so
Speaker 1: many more are lost to time, their stories, their ambitions,
Speaker 1: their experiences.
Speaker 2: So there is certainly a huge base of folks who
Speaker 2: know about it, but beyond it, it's sort of like,
Speaker 2: all right, well there are people who managed to do this,
Speaker 2: but you don't know who they are. And you know,
Speaker 2: today something like this would be all over the place.
Speaker 2: You could look it up on the Internet. If there
Speaker 2: were forty fifty sixty people who were in the Fireworld
Speaker 2: contest and it happened today, you'd know everybody's names. Everybody
Speaker 2: would have it up on their social media. Hey I
Speaker 2: did this way. It is a mystery, And so that mysteriousness,
Speaker 2: even if it's not an intentional mysteriousness, just purely because
Speaker 2: so much of this is lost in the mists of time,
Speaker 2: that gives it a certain are of something special. It
Speaker 2: was also the first time, least I'm aware that something
Speaker 2: this big was attempted by one of the video game companies.
Speaker 2: And it also because it happened just as the first
Speaker 2: push of video games kind of peaked, the entire video
Speaker 2: game industry sort of collapsed in the early eighties.
Speaker 1: For Clive, the photos are perfectly emblematic of sword Quest.
Speaker 1: A lot of threads to tug on.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, it's a story with so many loose ends. Inevitably,
Speaker 2: just because that last game never came out.
Speaker 1: One loose end we can tie up right now. Remember
Speaker 1: that Clive was in Long Island to see his girlfriend.
Speaker 1: That's the whole reason he found the photos. She's no
Speaker 1: longer his girlfriend.
Speaker 2: This girl who became my wife for the last on
Speaker 2: teen decades.
Speaker 1: Spoken like a true romantic. Clive's sword Quest had a
Speaker 1: happy ending, but for the rest of the Atari faithful,
Speaker 1: his discovery prompted more questions, but they wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: wait long for an answer. Just two years after the
Speaker 1: photos were found, someone else delivered an even bigger bombshell.
Speaker 1: And that's someone was Ken Van Mersberkin.
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden, this prototype in quotes
Speaker 3: my air Quotes shows up on Neebay sword Quest Airworld
Speaker 3: like No, can't.
Speaker 1: Be Airworld, the lost sword Quest game That's next time
Speaker 1: on sword Quest.
Speaker 6: The Legend of sword Quest is a production of iHeart
Speaker 6: Podcasts and School of Humans.
Speaker 2: This episode was written by Jake Rosson and hosted by
Speaker 2: Jamie Loftus producers are Miranda Hawkins and Josh Fisher. Executive
Speaker 2: producers are Virginia Prescott, L. C. Crowley, Brandon Barr, and
Speaker 2: Jason English.
Speaker 6: Our show editor is Mary Doo.
Speaker 2: Audio engineering by Graham Gibson, Research and fact checking by
Speaker 2: Austin Thompson and Jake Rosson. Original score by Jesse Niswanger.
Speaker 2: This episode was sound designed by Josh Fisher, mixing and mastering.
Speaker 7: By Jake Cook show logan by Lucy Quintonia. The voice
Speaker 7: in this episode was provided by Jason English.