Man chats about his $15k NES game

by Chris Greenhough { Apr 30th 2008 at 10:30PM }

James Baker collects games, but probably not in the same way that any of us collect games. Baker recently coughed up $15,000 for one of the 26 gold-colored NES carts that were originally manufactured for the Nintendo World Championships in 1990 (only twelve are still accounted for) -- in fact, we're fairly certain that his is the cart we posted about recently.

Speaking to Edge about his latest acquisition, Baker confesses that spending so much on a single videogame is "pretty crazy," but also says that he "doesn't really see it purely as a videogame."

Not only is the guy richer than us, he's also a lot braver -- when he received the cart, he popped it into his NES to give it a go! "I didn't even need to blow on the end of it to get it to work," he said, nonchalantly. You better believe that playing such a game would be the last thing on our minds. Instead, we'd be handling it very delicately, and then only after washing our hands several times over.

(Fun fact: $15,000 would cover the cost of 1.5m Wii Points, which in turn could be used to purchase the whole of the current U.S. Virtual Console line-up -- more than ten times over.)

Tags: ebay, edge, famicom, nes, nintendo-world-championships, nintendo-world-championships-1990, nwc, nwc-90, rare

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jhongerkong @ Apr 30th 2008 10:48PM

$15000!?

Thats like, a cheap mail-order bride right there!

Jesus frias @ Apr 30th 2008 10:55PM

...may i know what game is it? lol
im curious!!

Kokomadeta @ May 1st 2008 3:52AM

To my knowledge, it's just 3 timed, almost demo-like versions of games. I think Super Mario Bros. is one of them. If I'm not mistaken the cart has been dumped online. But, I may just be mistaken. You might want to hit Wikipedia or something.

xeleion @ Apr 30th 2008 11:05PM

D:

-is mad that people are spending that much on NES games when he could be using that money for his crazy tuition costs.

Roto13 @ Apr 30th 2008 11:14PM

If I had $15,000 to piss away, I'd probably find something more meaningful to do with it.

TheWarlock @ Apr 30th 2008 11:22PM

Yeah, I'd probably do the surgical styled washing hands process, then burn them, making sure that they're sterilized, and THEN I would hug the cartridge. But seriously, 15,000 dollars? Christ, you could buy a lot more[better] wii games with that cash, assuming, ofc that he hasn't already.

theb1rdm4n @ May 1st 2008 12:37AM

Its over 9,000!!!!!!

Wait... Its over 15,000!!!!!!!

Croove55 @ May 1st 2008 12:43AM

Yes, yes, 15k is a lot to blow on an old, yet rare, NES cartridge. But (almost) everyone has a hobby, and Baker's is obviously collecting video games. He could have used the money for something else, something that would seem more useful to someone else, but why bother if that game is what makes him happy? Happiness is probably the best thing anyone could hope to get in exchange for their monetary wealth.

Hell, by comparison, a resident of a third world country would wonder why we spend hundreds of dollars on video games when we could be buying food to feed ourselves in the future. It's all perspective.

Waffala @ May 1st 2008 2:15AM

Are you saying in order to buy the entire North American virtual console catalog it would take roughly 1500$? Thank you wiifanboy for Monday Madness and spending those monies on us so we won't waste our own.

Chris Greenhough @ May 1st 2008 9:02AM

Yep, if my maths is correct, the U.S VC is worth 149,700 Wii Points.

* waits for someone to correct this *

Donald @ May 1st 2008 11:56AM

Per Wikipedia (so it must be true):

66 games x 500 points = 33,000
45 x 600 = 27,000
86 x 800 = 68,800
11 x 900 = 9,900
12 x 1000 = 12,000
1 x 1200 = 1,200

= 151,900 points for every game on the North American VC.

DomoBraden @ May 1st 2008 2:41AM

If I had $15k laying around I would've picked this up, doused it in gasoline, and uploaded the resulting video to YouTube, (you know... for the lulz). The comments would be epic.

Silverbullet767 @ May 1st 2008 4:25AM

I hope you know this is just an ordinary game that's been spray-painted gold, I could have bought an original, spray-painted it, then put it on ebay for suckers like this.

Hey, anyone wanna buy special limited edition golden beans??

Only £4,000,000 ono