Update: Following on from last week’s listing of a rare Nintendo World Championship NES cartridge being listed on eBay, two more collector’s have listed their own versions of the game on the site.
While the first is another grey one, this time in mint-condition with an undamaged label, the real draw is the even rarer gold one, only 26 of which were ever made for Nintendo Power prize winners.
While the original auction listed below ended with a final bid of a whopping $99,902, reports are coming in it was flooded with trolls, most of whom are now withdrawing their bids at the higher tiers.
Original story follows.
Original Story: An extremely rare NES cartridge has been listed on eBay, where it’s expected to fetch a huge amount of money.
Only 116 copies of Nintendo World Championships were ever manufactured, as competition prizes back in 1990, so were never available on general sale.
Despite the fact that the label is torn and “Mario” has been scribbled on it in ballpoint, the “super-rare” nature of the item means it’s still likely to raise a huge amount of interest. “This is quite unfortunate but happened many decades ago,” reads the description, which adds that the original owner didn’t have “a clue what they actually had”.
The cartridge features shortened versions of Super Mario, Tetris and Rad Racer. It was on these three classics that competition entrants were tasked with scoring the most points in six minutes, with the winner receiving various prizes. All 90 of the semi-finalists got a grey cartridge like the one on auction, though some golden cartridges were made for a separate Nintendo Power competition.
The auction ends tomorrow, with a high bid of $5,500 at the time of writing. The last time one of these was publicly sold was in 2011 at a charity auction, where it fetched $11,000. That one was in better condition, however.
Luke Karmali is IGN’s UK Junior Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter.
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