What just happened? One of the rarest Nintendo artifacts of all time has hit the auction block: a gold Nintendo World Championships cartridge. It’s one of only 26 ever produced as grand prizes for Nintendo Power magazine’s “Player’s Poll Contest” back in 1990.
In 1990, Nintendo held the first-ever Nintendo World Championships – a touring competition that hit 29 cities across the US from March to December. It pitted the country’s elite gamers against each other, battling for high scores in timed versions of classics including Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer, and Tetris.
To run these competitions, Nintendo made several hundred special gray cartridges containing all three games, with built-in hardware switches to adjust the time limits. Most were basic gray plastic shells. However, 26 were decked out in gold casings – the grand prizes reserved for that year’s Nintendo Power player poll.
Flash forward over 30 years, and these gold cartridges have become the stuff of legend for collectors. Out of the original production run, only 13 or so of these golden Nintendo relics are even known to still exist.
Collectibles marketplace Goldin also notes that some Nintendo historians have turned into sleuths, relentlessly trying to track down the original 26 contest winners to trace the journeys of these artifacts over the decades.
The cartridge up for auction originally belonged to 1990 Nintendo Power contest winner Patrick King of Cheyenne, Wyoming. His name appeared in volume 18 of Nintendo Power magazine, along with the other Player’s Poll contest winners.
The cartridge is a bit beat up, with its original label missing. That’s because these World Championship units were never officially packaged or sold in stores, which is part of why this one has earned a 4.0 condition grade from CGC Grading. However, the direct connection to one of the 26 grand prize winners provides ironclad provenance.
The auction house seems well aware of just how rare a piece they have on their hands. Bidding opened at a cool $10,000. Prospective buyers will be pre-screened to ensure they can actually pay up if they win. As of writing, the bid has already touched $67,000.
