One of the rarest NES games of all time goes up for auction today

Starting tonight, Goldin will beryllium auctioning off 1 of nan rarest Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges of each time. Nintendo primitively created only 26 of these golden cartridges arsenic prizes for Nintendo Power mag readers successful 1990. They’re truthful difficult to travel by that one sold connected eBay for $100,088 a decade ago.

Hundreds of cartridges were created for nan 1990 Nintendo World Championships, an arena that toured nan United States trying to find nan country’s champion gamers. Players competed for precocious scores successful timed versions of Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and Rad Racer, which were each bundled onto typical cartridges featuring beingness switches, allowing nan games’ clip limits to beryllium modified.

Most of these cartridges featured modular grey NES shells, but 26 of them were upgraded pinch a shiny golden lodging and fixed distant to winners of Nintendo Power magazine’s “Player’s Poll Contest” that aforesaid year.

According to Goldin, this peculiar golden cartridge was nan 1 awarded to Patrick King of Cheyenne, Wyoming, whose name appeared successful measurement 18 of Nintendo Power, on pinch nan different Player’s Poll Contest winners.

These games were ne'er sold successful packaging, which partially explains why this peculiar cartridge, which appears worn and is missing its label, was fixed conscionable a 4.0 people by CGC Grading. (A grading of 10 would bespeak mint condition.)

Despite nan cartridge’s unsmooth shape, bidding coming will commencement astatine $10,000. According to nan FAQ page connected nan auction house’s website, astatine that level, imaginable buyers will beryllium prescreened to guarantee they tin salary up. That will thief protect nan cartridge’s chartless seller, but what astir buyers?

Faking a uncommon cartridge for illustration this and fooling CGC Grading would beryllium a immense but profitable undertaking fixed nan existent request for rare retro games and hardware. The easiest measurement to corroborate that this 1 is legit is to triumph nan auction and plug nan cartridge into an existent NES, but that could extremity up being a budget-busting attack champion near to deep-pocketed collectors.