One of 26 Rare NES Gold Cartridges Goes Up for Auction Today

Starting tonight, Goldin will be auctioning off one of the rarest Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges of all time. Nintendo originally created just 26 of these golden cartridges as a prize for Nintendo Power magazine readers in 1990. They are so hard to find 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 to find the country’s best players. Players competed for high scores in timed versions of Super Mario Bros., TetrisAnd Rad Runner, which were all bundled together on special cartridges with physical switches, allowing the time limits of the games to be changed.

Most of these cartridges came with standard gray NES shells, but 26 of them were upgraded with shiny gold cases and given away to the winners. Nintendo Power magazine’s “Gamer Poll Contest” that same year.

These games were never sold in a box, which is part of the reason why this particular cartridge, which appears worn and is missing its label, only received a 4.0 grade from CGC Grading. (A grade of 10 would indicate mint condition.)

Despite the cartridge’s rough condition, bidding will start tonight at $10,000. According to the auction house’s website FAQ page, at this level, potential buyers will be pre-screened to ensure they can afford to pay. This will help protect the unknown seller of the cartridge, but what about the buyers?

Forcing a rare cartridge like this and fooling CGC Grading would be a huge but profitable undertaking given the current demand for rare retro games and hardware. The easiest way to confirm that this one is legit is to win the auction and plug the cartridge into a real NES, but that might prove to be a big-budget approach best left to the wealthiest collectors.