Super Rare NES game in eBay auction at $89,000 | Hacker News Reader

Super Rare NES game in eBay auction at $89,000

ebay.com

72 pointsdsyph3r51 comments

Just a reminder that anyone can bid any amount for anything on eBay, with no repercussions.

Source: I once put a website for sale on eBay. Bids went up to $10M. The press covered it like crazy. Turned out the bids were fake.

For example:

http://www.salon.com/2000/09/11/ebay_deadpool/

There were articles about it in Forbes and Cnet also.

What happens in that case? Does it get sold to the next real bidder?

For anyone who has no idea what this is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_World_Championships

I looked up it in wiki. Still have no idea what it is...

Its a cartridge that only finalists of a competition were given.

How many of these exist?

There was a guy on reddit who was actually a winner in the 18+ category who still has his with its label

If this one is worth 90k then his must be double that

This one is not worth 90k. It got published on multiple news website and now there's ton of fake bid on it. In good condition it's worth 6k but I've never seen one in this bad shape, it's probably worth much less. The gold one is worth way more, about 20k in good condition.

Reddit link: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/1tgxke/i_was...

But bids can be done by anybody. Without any confirmation. So I'm still not sure about price.

> How many of these exist?

90 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_World_Championships#Ca...

I don't blame you. I found most Wiki entries assume readers already have pre-existing knowledge.

This video will explain shows actual game play. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJY7HKJsnAI

Sometimes, I wish I kept my rather comprehensive collection of Squaresoft games, Nintendo consoles and games, and rare Capcom imports. I got about $2000 total for all of them a couple years ago on eBay - much less than what I thought they would be worth.

I had imagined that someday I would just be able to emulate the games on future computers, and there was no rational reason to waste space with the dusty relics I was not playing. What was less obvious at the time was that I really had little intention of actually re-playing most of these now collectibles which I had already played to a pulp. The future of perfect hardware and software emulation was as irrelevant as was impossible.

What I gave up for some quick cash was basically a life long historical record with the physical artifacts to match. It will be a bitter sweet day in the future when I visit the Video Game Museum to see my lost history. At least I still have my Marvel cards.

The Nintendo World Championships gold cartridges are more rare than the grey ones (only 26 of them were made). The Nerd also covered it some time ago in an avgn episode. Having seen it's not a "super rare elusive game", he smashes the overglorified cartridges with a hammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs2wczJXETM

Just to be clear: he didn't actually smash the real cartridges. Doing that would be, well, pretty stupid.

Thanks for the clarification. Given their value, that would indeed be foolish. Don't smash rare cartridges with a hammer, kids! That's not really the point of the video.

The price seems super high. It's not in great condition and more rare games have gone for less fairly recently.

Game collecting has become a thing lately and the more rabid collectors are, frankly, idiots.

You could say the same about arts, mangas or Pez dispensers. Having owned and sold a large Super Famicom and vinyl collection I can definitely say that collecting is (was) way more fun than owning.

Do art, manga and Pez collectors pay almost six figures for beat up junk? For stuff that isn't even readily identifiable? For context, these carts have previously sold for between $10K and $20K. In much better condition too.

The only conclusion I can come to is that rabid video game collectors are a special kind of stupid.

I wouldn't call collectors who act out of irrationality stupid since you have to look at the motivation behind a deal situationally — I'd just say it's on the edge of being an unethical waste of money.

> I wouldn't call collectors who act out of irrationality stupid since you have to look at the motivation behind a deal situationally — I'd just say it's on the edge of being an unethical waste of money.

Unethical? Huh? Ethics is concerned with morality; with right and wrong. There's nothing inherently wrong about paying large sums of money for beat-up bits of electronics. It's just plain ol' stupid.

One good reason might be if you think the value is going to increase beyond what you paid for it, like people paying whatever mad amount for bitcoins.

I think people who spend huge amounts on diamonds are stupid, but everyone has their reasons.

There are loads of ethical systems that condemn wastefulness of money; the US has had at various points at least a plurality, if not a majority of people ascribe to moral systems derived from puritanism, so at least in the US, it is unsurprising to hear someone saying that wasting money is unethical.

Do you think? Films are only 100 years old and collecting film memorabilia has been popular for some time.

Is it not conceivable that video games might be collected in the same way in 60 or 70 years time?

Young people starting to collect now might rationalising their purchases as a bet that the value of such things will skyrocket by the end of their lifetime. I don't think that's such a crazy bet.

> Is it not conceivable that video games might be collected in the same way in 60 or 70 years time?

I'm not arguing against collecting games. I'm saying that paying (almost) six figures for a cart that historically sells for about five times less, a cart that can't even be readily identified, is dumb.

>"cart that can't even be readily identified"

The cart can be identified by the switches on the front, also since only 90 cart were produced (and gave away, you couldn't even buy one) makes it collecting value fairly high.

One can disagree about the irrationality of a collector with money, but I wouldn't call stupid something that I don't understand, it's rude and potentially incorrect.

> One can disagree about the irrationality of a collector with money, but I wouldn't call stupid something that I don't understand, it's rude and potentially incorrect.

I'm not arguing from a position of ignorance. I've been collecting NES games for close to 20 years. I think I know what's what. But don't take my word for it; see for yourself what the NES collecting community makes of this auction:

http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=3&threadi...

Yeah, "In 2011, the same game sold at a charity auction for $11,000 (£6,600) - but it was in better condition."[1]

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25878678

what games are more rare? maybe the original stadium events?

EDIT: I said track and field originally.

The later SNES version of the event has only 2 surviving copies.

Not sure if someone will fork out 100k for a dev build of Angry Birds in 20 years from now.

The thing about this cartridge is that it's a physical object, and people can generally see more value in possessing one rather than effectively just a very large integer... someone has already dumped the ROM for this one and you can find it offered in a lot of places online.

I do believe that the cartridge from the 94 Nintendo PowerFest is even more rare. Something like only 2 being left as they weren't given out to winners. It's for the SNES though. I remember winning a round of this competition and getting a shirt I still have, a Virtual Boy hat, and some other Nintendo swag. Maybe the shirt is worth something these days.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&rt=nc&item=2...

Why would someone bid multiple times when they already have the highest bid?

Ebay only shows the leading bid any time a big is placed. So when someone bids higher than the currently visible bid, but lower than that person's max bid, the leading bidder is shown as placing another, larger bid. You end up with the appearance of someone outbidding themselves repeatedly.

I'm surprised they don't show the new second-place bidding in the history, if only to make it obvious what's happening. Like if there's a starting price of 10, I bid at 100 and then someone bids at 20, then it could show me bidding 10, them bidding 20 and me bidding 21, instead of just me at 10 then me at 21.

eBay's system works that way. Before oo's (I'll leave the asterisks out) bid, the highest bid amount was $89'100 by e7. oo then bid an amount between $89'900 and $90'000. At this point, eBay only displays $89'300 bid, the higher amount is retained as a (non-displayed) maximum bid. Later on, another bidder (probably ss) upped the price in $200 increments: they bid $89'300 (to which eBay publicised oo's previous maximum bid of over $89'300), then $89'500 and so on.

In this system, the highest bid always wins -- bid amount being equal, the earlier bid prevails.

Its takes the advantage away from people with more time on their hands.

Only if people always bid the actual highest amount they're willing to pay. The huge popularity of "sniping" suggests that they often don't.

It's poor strategy to do so, as it gives other people a chance to decide whether they want to outbid you.

Best strategy is to bid your maximum amount in the dying seconds, if that's still enough - if someone was happily sat below their max, and didn't increase because they were "winning", you can grab it off them for less than if you had both fought for top spot throughout the auction.

Of course, if everyone bids their maximum amount when they notice the auction, sniping like this becomes irrelevant. But people don't, because they're people. I like that they're acting like people when I'm selling things. I dislike it when I'm buying things (because they push the price up by fighting for the top spot days before the end.)

let James enlighten you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs2wczJXETM

I just like that he gives the provenance. Some sort of official registry can't be far behind.

People really have money. That's one year salary for a developer!!!!!

That's one year's salary for an extremely well-paid developer.

I was hoping it was a NES version of Mire Mare, myself.

Be careful with flash photos of those EPROMs..

Well, at least he gets free shipping.

It looks like game is $0.99 and shipping is $91,099.00 price combined for convenience. =)

there is a marquee tag there and I can't see anything else.

Looks fake/conterfit without label. Why anyone whould pay thousands for some game I could never understand.

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