Nintendo World Championship: R1 million quest

Yet another copy of Nintendo World Championship (NWC) has been sold on eBay for the whopping price of US$100,088 (±R1,112,000) – this time it’s a rare gold version of the NES cartridge.

You may recall the news from a few weeks back that a grey version of the cartridge had been sold to a winning bid of US$99,902. However, the winning bidder soon backed out claiming that his 2-year-old child had somehow accidentally (improbably) placed the bid. That cartridge is now back up on auction, currently at a bid of US$65,000 with 3 days to go.

Despite the hoax bidding, interest has been renewed in this collectible item, with 3 more having gone up for auction since.

A brief history of NWC sets the context for the rarity:

The Nintendo World Championship game was produced as part of a Nintendo competition of the same name held in 1990 across the US. In the competition, competitors had 6 minutes and 21 seconds to complete a customised mixture of Mario, Rad Racer, and Tetris.

While it’s difficult to find an original source for the claim, it is thought that only 116 of the grey cartridges were manufactured for use during the competition.

90 of the grey cartridges were given to the tournament’s 90 finalists, and 26 special gold editions were created from the spare grey versions and given away as prizes in a Nintendo Power magazine contest.

The grey edition label (when intact) has a unique identifier making it difficult to counterfeit, while the gold edition label has no such identifier. Both versions come equipped with a DIP switch to set the time limit of the game.

Do you think the intrinsic value of these undeniably rare and collectible cartridges can approach the R1 million mark? Let us know in the comments.