Former Fable dev reunited with commemorative plaque he lost 12 years ago thanks to a random eBay auction

pcgamer.com:

Mike Ducker was given a plaque to commemorate his work on Fable, the Lionhead RPG released in 2004 for the original Xbox. In 2010, it went missing under mysterious circumstances—and now, 12 years later, a spot of good luck has put it back in his hands.

Ducker, whose Mobygames(opens in new tab) profile lists him as a programmer on every Fable game from the original to Fable: Anniversary in 2014, shared the story about the loss and recovery of the plaque on Twitter. «The plaque I was given for making Fable has been missing [and] presumed stolen since 2010,» he wrote. «It ended up in a recycling centre auction in Northampton around 2014, then sat in a collection until it went on sale on eBay recently, where a game dev I'd never met saw it and told me.

»The seller returned it for the price they paid for it (less than 10% of what they had listed it for and much less than I was willing to pay). Never thought I'd see it again and so unlikely that I ever did. I am, of course, paying them more than they asked (and throwing in a Fable 1 standee I found in my tiny collection of memorabilia)"

Ducker also called for «many blessings» upon Ichi Sumeragi, who informed him of the auction(opens in new tab) last week. The auction has since been cancelled, but you can still see the page through the magic of the Wayback Machine(opens in new tab). The seller was asking £995 ($1,112) for the plaque, which they said is in «like new» condition—and which Ducker said he was not in a position to pay in order to get it back.

The seller returned it for the price they paid for it (less than 10% of what they had listed it for and much less than I was willing to pay). Never thought I'd see it again and so unlikely that I ever did