A very rare, old and highly sought-after video game is currently being auctioned off and has already reached 60,000 euros. There are still more than 20 days left until the auction ends and it is shaping up to be one of the biggest sales of the year. But can a retro game really cost that much?
If you’re into old video games, you’ll probably know that retrogaming culture is full of collectors’ items, hard-to-find games, and items that fans can’t get enough of. Among them, however, there are games that, like the Nintendo World Championships 1990 gold cartridge for the NES console, are a real rarity.
Only 26 units were created
The Nintendo World Championships 1990 cartridge has a lot of history. Hundreds of units of the original were created and, although it is also considered a rarity, the important one is the one with the gold frame. There were only 26 of this model. They were manufactured as prizes for 26 readers of Nintendo Power magazine who won the Player’s Poll Contest held at the same time.
Both the gold and the original grey models were cartridges that were never officially sold. They were manufactured as a tool for the celebration of the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, a competition that took place that year in the United States in different parts of the country. The peculiarity, as you can see in the photo, is that the cartridge has levers that allowed you to adjust the time limits during the competition. The cartridges in question were used with the games Super Mario Bros., Tetris and Rad Racer, which were the titles with which Nintendo wanted to find the best players in all of North America.
It is in an improvable state
Such is the rarity of this cartridge that it doesn’t matter that it’s in poor condition, as the bids are piling up and pushing the game to astronomical levels of price. The original owner of this cartridge was Patrick King, a resident of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Over the years it has been difficult to keep games in good condition, which has led to this valuable cartridge losing its main sticker and receiving a rating of only 4 out of 10 from the CGC Grading service. However, as we noted, the bids keep piling up.
The bidding started at $10,000 and, as we mentioned, has already exceeded €60,000. It should be remembered that the last time one of these 26 cartridges was auctioned was 10 years ago and the price, at that time, reached $100,000. In that case, it was in better condition. But no one can ignore the fact that a decade had to pass before another of the legendary cartridges saw the light of day, which will surely make this auction have more impact.
The sale is being handled by the respected auction house Goldin, which has arranged everything so that the seller, who remains anonymous, can be sure that the buyer will not back out. Thus, a bidding check must be passed to verify that the necessary budget is available to be able to participate in the auction in question.
According to records and information known by the video game industry, of the 26 golden cartridges from Nintendo World Championships 1990, only 13 are known to have survived. The rest could have been lost, ended up in the trash, or who knows, one day one might turn up in a storage room in the belongings of a grandfather, father, or uncle in the family. It might not be a bad idea to take a look at the old games you have at home, because you might have one that will pay for your vacation.
