Wisconsin store owner, Nintendo superfan discovers dozens of ultra rare vintage Mario Bros. game cartridges: Holy Grail
A few years ago, a pop culture store owner in Wisconsin mentioned to Jason Ganos, a well-known Nintendo game collector, that he had a box of Super Mario cartridges that had been sitting in storage for years.It stopped Ganos in his tracks.It turned out to be an ultra rare collection of 97 “absolutely pristine” copies of Super Mario Brothers Duck Hunt, a popular Nintendo game that had been released in 1988, Ganos said.After some initial research, Ganos found that the cartridges he held were not only a new variant of the game, but also the last known production date of it.Most of the cartridges will go up for sale Friday in an online auction that will run until Sept.
9.“I still don’t quite believe that any of this is happening,” Ganos said.“I just think it’s kind of serendipitous that this happened.
It’s just still very bizarre to me.”Ganos, a hard-core fan covered in Nintendo tattoos and who has operated Nintendo Wire, a news service for Nintendo announcements and nostalgia for over 10 years, said he would not venture to guess how much the games are worth.But when he saw the box, he immediately knew it was special.“It’s like pulling out like a Holy Grail,” Ganos said, later adding, “they’re gorgeous.”The discovery came after the owner, Kevin Braun, of One Stop Wonders in Waukesha, outside Milwaukee, asked Ganos to help him sell some stuff, including common Nintendo games and Pokémon cards.Braun mentioned the box of Mario cartridges that had been sitting in storage for years.He recalled buying them from a customer whose family had kept them for metal scraps but thought they were not worth much.The cartridges of Super Mario Brothers Duck Hunt he had were made in 1993, long after the company discontinued the bundle in 1991.
Braun and Ganos still aren’t sure why the copies they possess were made but assume they were either warranty replacements or part of a bundle with a box retailer that never panned out.Knowing the potential significa...