Nintendo World Championships gets king’s ransom.
How much would you pay for a classic, extremely hard to find game that you really want in your collection? $50? $100? $200? Well, the price paid for Nintendo World Championships on eBay yesterday was well above those figures. Back in 2011, another copy of the game sold for $11,000 on the auction site, but this figure from a day ago dwarfs that: $99,902. Now I know what you’re thinking… this can’t be real, right?
Well, while it certainly could be a fake bid, the bidder was the first and last person to make a play for the game. Also, the bidder also has a “100 percent positive feedback score of 775,” according to Gamespot. The only thing I could think of to debunk this auction is that maybe the bidder entered the wrong amount, though for a game this scarce I’m leaning towards it being correct. Of course, the entire auction itself could be fake, which is another possibility, but all indications thus far are that this is a legitimate sale.
Source: Price Charting
For those wondering, the reason why Nintendo World Championships garners so much money in auctions can be explained by the fact that only 116 copies were ever produced. Given away in 1990 to the finalists of a competition by the same name and then as a prize for winning a contest through the magazine Nintendo Power, it is a highly sought after cartridge. The copies given away to the finalists are grey and individually numbered, making them hard to counterfeit. The other copies are gold and considered to be worth more, simply because there are fewer of them.
The $99,902 bid sets a new record as the highest amount ever paid for a video game. Another copy of the game has popped up on eBay for auction here, with over six days left before it closes. Personally, I don’t think that the final figure for this new auction will reach the heights of the previous one, but I’ll definitely be tracking it to see how high it goes.