The gold-cased Nintendo World Championships cartridge was never sold to the public — it was a grand-prize giveaway through Nintendo Power magazine in 1990, and only 26 were ever made.
The gray-cartridge version (given to tournament competitors) is rare on its own; the gold edition is the single rarest piece of standard Nintendo hardware in existence.
The $207,400 result at Goldin Auctions reminded collectors that rarity, not just nostalgia, is what really drives these numbers — a cartridge nobody could have bought new, at any price, because it was never for sale.
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