February 10, 2009 12:07 PM PST

Rare Xbox Live gamertag 'Hitman' up for sale on eBay

If you're the kind of video game player who likes to spend hours in shooters like Call of Duty or Halo and you want to instantly pick up some serious street cred, what better Xbox Live gamertag than "Hitman" could you get?

To date, of course, the best you could do would be something like "Hitman238" or "xxHitman42." That's because "Hitman" itself was snagged back in the summer of 2002, during the beta phase of Xbox Live, by a then 16-year-old named Chris Graziano.

But now, Graziano, 22 and a student at SUNY New Paltz, has decided to sell Hitman, and has put it up for auction on eBay. He is hoping someone out there will plunk down big bucks for the right to shoot their way through the most popular war games while sporting such an obviously old-school gamertag.

Longtime Xbox Live player Chris Graziano has put his gamer tag, "Hitman," up for sale on eBay. It may end up netting big bucks as a desirable moniker.

(Credit: Chris Graziano)

"Don't bid on this item if you don't want to be the center of attention of every game lobby you're in," Graziano wrote on the eBay ad. "You'll regularly hear comments of 'You're the original Hitman?' and 'Wow, how did you get that gamertag?!'"

It's too early to tell how much money the Hitman name might bring in the end, as the auction doesn't end until February 19 and as of this writing, the high bid is $49.99. But Graziano said he was inspired to sell the account by another auction he'd seen not too long ago in which a player sold a gamertag with a very high gamerscore--the measure of how many achievements someone has earned in Xbox Live--for thousands of dollars.

And, possessing what could be seen as one of the best gamertags, Graziano said he thought there might be some big money in selling Hitman, particularly because he said he once saw an article on a video game site that estimated "Hitman" was the most commonly used term in Xbox Live gamertags. Indeed, he said that when he plays, he commonly encounters comments like, "Wow, so you're the original Hitman?" and, "How'd you get that screen name?"

At the same time, his willingness to let go of the tag reflects his feelings about playing video games--though he sounds like he's not quite ready to give up the pastime altogether.

"I've been someone frustrated with the path of video games lately, specifically sport games," Graziano said. "The improvements have drastically slowed down. But no, I won't be moving on to other pastures. I'll probably just get a new" gamertag.

He also said he now owns a PlayStation 3, so it's always possible he'll migrate to that console's platform and games from the Xbox ecosystem.

Originally posted at Gaming and Culture