Starting tonight, Goldin will be auctioning One of the rarest Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges of all time. Nintendo originally created only 26 of these golden cartridges as prizes for Nintendo Power magazine readers in 1990. They are so hard to get that One sold on eBay for $100,088 a decade ago.
Hundreds of cartridges were created. for the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, an event that toured the United States in search of the country's best players. Players competed to obtain high scores in timed versions of Super Mario Bros., Tetrisand Radical runner, which were all grouped into special cartridges with physical switches, allowing the time limits of the games to be modified.
Most of these cartridges had standard gray NES shells, but 26 of them were upgraded with a shiny gold shell and given away to the winners of Nintendo Power “Gamer Poll Contest” from the magazine that same year.
These games were never sold in a bundle, which partly explains why this particular cartridge, which appears worn and is missing its label, received only a 4.0 rating. CGC Rating(A rating of 10 would indicate a mint condition.)
Despite the irregular shape of the cartridge, tonight's auction will start at $10,000. According to the FAQ page on the auction house websiteAt that level, potential buyers will be pre-screened to ensure they can pay. That will help protect the unknown seller of the cartridge, but what about the buyers?
Counterfeiting a rare cartridge like this and fooling CGC Grading would be a massive but profitable undertaking given the current demand for rare retro games and hardware. The easiest way to confirm this one is legit is to win the auction and plug the cartridge into a real NES, but that could end up being a budget-busting strategy best left to deep-pocketed collectors.
