Only 26 copies of this gold-finished cartridge were ever produced. | Image: Goldin
Starting tonight, Goldin will be auctioning off one of the rarest Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges of all time. Nintendo originally created only 26 of these gold cartridges as prizes for Nintendo Power magazine readers in 1990. They’re so hard to come by that one sold on eBay for $100,088 a decade ago.
Hundreds of cartridges were created for the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, an event that toured the United States trying to find the country’s best gamers. Players competed for high scores in timed versions of Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and Rad Racer, which were all bundled onto special cartridges featuring physical switches, allowing the games’ time limits to be modified.
Most of these cartridges featured standard gray NES…