Nintendo World Championship Cart is Nearly ‘Traded In’

If you’ve ever worked at a store that deals almost exclusively in 2nd-hand games, you know that the vast majority of the time when people walk through the door with a bag full of games it is often not going to be a very exciting experience. There is, however, always that chance that one day something extra special might turn up. Well, it seems that this exact instance has just happened with one of the most coveted Nintendo games ever released.

In a report via Arstechnica, a man in America entered a 2nd-hand retro gaming store with a bag of largely unassuming Nintendo titles. You can see below some of those he was cashing in on. Decent, but unremarkable. At the very bottom of the bag, however, was a 100% legitimate grey Nintendo World Championship Cartridge. Here’s the thing though, the guy had absolutely no idea of the significance of this game!

What Is Nintendo World Championships?

Have you ever seen that film ‘The Wizard’? You know, the one with Fred Savage and his younger brother? He has something of a knack with NES games and an irrational desire to go to California?… The Power Glove? – “It’s so bad!”?

Don’t worry if you haven’t because the film is largely awful and, for all intents and purposes, was simply a 90-minute long commercial. In it, however, a Nintendo competition acted as the finale and this event legitimately took place in 1990.

For those who entered (or more specifically reached the ‘finals’) they were each given a copy of this cartridge to own and keep. As you might therefore expect, this has made it exceptionally rare and, in retro gaming terms, one of the Holy Grail items for the NES collector.

What Happened Here?

The seller was aware that his brother had attended the event, but had literally no idea of the significance of the game. He was, literally, just looking to trade it in (with a bunch of other games) for some easy money.

The retro gaming store (Pink Gorilla) initially thought that this was a reproduction cart. A little investigation, however, quickly revealed that this was an entirely legitimate Nintendo World Championship cart. Then they thought that this was a hoax. It turns out, however, that the owner literally had no idea how valuable this was.

Thankfully, for the owner of the game, this store is both well-known and clearly very honest as they informed him that this wasn’t standard ‘trade-in’ stock. It was actually worth a lot of money.

How much? Well, in an update, he was successfully able to sell it for $22,000. It just goes to show, however, that if you have a bunch of old games in your attic, it might be worth doing a little research first before you just try and flip them quickly. You never know what you might have!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!