Check your attics, folks. You never know what tech treasures are up there gathering dust. One family is now $9,000 (£7,400) richer after discovering an 30-year-old unopened Nintendo game during a recent clearout.
A shrink-wrapped copy of Kid Icarus for the original Nintendo Entertainment System was unearthed in a box of childhood possessions at Scott Amos’s family home in Reno, Nevada.
The game is one of under ten known-of unopened copies in the wild and was discovered with the original receipt from 1988. The game was purchased from US department store JC Penney in December that year and cost $38.45 (around £31).
The $9,000 yield from the game, which the family believes was bought as a Christmas present but never gifted, is enough to buy 150 full-priced games for the current Nintendo Switch console.
“Our only theory is that it was a Christmas present my mom bought for us and never actually gave to us,” 40-year-old Amos, who was 9 at the time, said (via CNN). After making the discovery, Amos said he had no idea how much the game was worth. “I just left it on the kitchen counter, within reach of my two small kids or the dog or anything else,” he added.
The listing on auction site Heritage Auctions reads: “Kid Icarus is considered one of the hardest titles to find for the NES in a sealed condition. Longtime collectors have even expressed to us that there are less than 10 sealed copies that are currently within collectors’ hands.”
Related: Best Nintendo Switch games 2019
The $9,000 cartridge
There are reports of another Rev-A version of the game that has sold for $12,000, but $9,000 for a video game you’ve never played isn’t something to be sniffed at.
It still has a ways to go to break the current world record for a video game cartridge though. A near-mint, sealed copy of the original Super Mario Bros. from 1985 sold for $100,150 (around £82,000) earlier this year.
What would you guess is your most valuable piece of old tech? Do you have a treasure trove of old games you’re saving for a rainy day? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.