USPS effectively stopped a SNES game preservation project after around $10K of games lost

An update on this story can be found here.

A Nintendo fan's attempt at digitally preserve every SNES game has come to a screeching halt after the United States Postal Service either lost or misplaced (read as: possibly stolen) a package with around 100 games in it, according to amateur archivist Byuu.

The package was the second of five packages containing SNES games, which were being sent to Byuu by a game collector in Germany, who had sent the games as a loan. Byuu intended on sending the games back to the collector once they were archived.

The donor had planned on loaning Byuu over 400 games to archive, but with this mishap, the process has effectively come to a stall.

However, the package containing around $7,500 to $10,000 worth of games has been "stuck in the Jersey City, NJ 07097 bulk mail processing warehouse with absolutely no movement." Apparently, the package had been sent on January 5th, 2017 and never reached Byuu.

USPS told Byuu to file a missing mail search, which they did on January 30th, however, USPS has not located the package (or touched base with Byuu). When Byuu called about the package, USPS said that the only option Byuu had was to wait.

The package was insured for 1,000 Euros, which obviously doesn't cover the entire value of the package. Byuu isn't asking for donations to pay the game collector for the lost package yet, first they are looking to get someone from USPS to help them.

If that doesn't happen, Byuu will attempt to pay for the games – at least as much as they can. After that, Byuu will "compute an exact value for the games, and then see if the insurance claim is paid out by DHL or not."

If all else fails, Byuu will make a "listing the 100 missing games and start fundraising to try and replace them all."

Hopefully, a USPS employee can help resolve this!

Check out Byuu's post in full here.

[TY, Artur]