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I kinda did think it was an urban myth, but more along the lines of "no way in hell did they bury literally millions of copies of a single reviled game out there".
Did I expect them to find Atari stuff there? Yes.
Did I expect them to find unsold ET carts as part of it? Yes.
Did I expect the count to be in the thousands? Yes, but provisionally as thousands of games, not necessarily thousands of nothing but ET. Some of the pics I saw showed a few other common titles, such as Centipede.
So yes, I expected the urban myth to be, well, a myth, but more along the lines of "there's a kernel of truth in that myth" kind of way than "completely utterly wrong".
Do note that ET was bad as a game, but specifically because of a couple of deep flaws, not because the concept itself was unsound. Some people in the community act like it's the ultimate bad game and singlehandedly responsible for almost killing the industry. I've never really thought so on that score, it was a minor factor in the "video game crash", nothing more.
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"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
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The Crash was already coming by the time they started making the ET game, about three weeks before release. In many respects, that game was a symptom of the disease in the American game industry at the time.
It definitely played a large part in accelerating the Crash though. Atari were so convinced it was going to be a killer app, they produced more cartridges then the amount of actual consoles in existence.
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Of course they do, they are rare so worth money now.
