How I Sold Nintendo World Championships Gold

I bought Nintendo World Championships Gold in June 2009 and the process was full of highs and lows and took quite a bit of effort. In December 2009 I sold the game in a charity auction and selling the game turned out to be almost as hard as buying it.

I decided to sell Nintendo World Championships Gold because the game was just sitting in a safe deposit box. I didn't need the money so I thought it would be better to give the money to a charity instead of keeping the proceeds. I chose World Vision.

On December 11th the auction for the game started on ebay. It was a 10 day listing with no reserve and a $0.99 starting price. It was set up as a 100% charity auction so all the proceeds would automatically be donated to the charity if the auction closed successfully.

Ten days, thousands of refreshes, and a couple tums later the auction ended with a final price of $13,600.

I contacted the high bidder, told them congratulation, and sent them a paypal invoice for the total. The next morning the high bidder emailed me back saying they didn't have the money to pay and wanted to cancel the listing.


I thought to myself, "Why can't buying or selling this game be easy? It must be cursed."

Luckily two other ebay users contacted me after the auction ended saying their bids hadn't gone through successfully and they were interested in the game if the high bidder backed out. I emailed both of these bidders, told them the winner flaked out, and said two people emailed with interest in the game. I would sell it to the buyer who was willing to pay the most instead of relisting it on ebay.

The highest price one of them was willing to pay was $18,000.

On December 26th the new high bidder sent me $1,000 in earnest money so I knew they were really going to pay for the game and not back out like the ebay winner. The buyer wanted to pick-up the game in person though and pay the rest of the money then.

For tax reasons I gave World Vision the full $18,000 donation on December 26th even though I had not received the full payment from the buyer. Because I had the earnest money I knew the seller would make the full payment or they would lose the $1,000.


Seven days later on January 5th 2010 the buyer flew out to Denver. We met at a Starbuck's near the bank where the NWC Gold game was kept and talked for a about an hour about game collecting, recent video games, and why he wanted NWC. It was great to sit and talk with a fellow gamer and game collector about something we are both passionate about.

The buyer showed me the confirmation of the money transfer on his laptop. Then we headed to the bank across the street.

I got the game out of the safe deposit box, we got a private viewing room and I showed the buyer the Holy Grail of Gaming. I opened the game up, showed him the circuit board on the inside, told him a few ways to verify its authenticity, and then sealed it back up.

We shook hands. I waved good-bye to the game forever. And we went our separate ways.

The buyer wishes to remain anonymous partly because he saw the angry comments people left on this blog about my purchase. He didn't want to receive hate mail too.

He plans to keep the game as long as he can and mentioned giving it to a museum when he does get rid of it. Maybe the Smithsonian will have a Nintendo World Championships Gold on display someday for the whole world to see.

PS: A couple people had contacted me or left comments online saying they thought the whole sale was a fraud and a publicity stunt and I never gave the money away at all. I wrote this article partly to satisfy some of these doubters. I also wrote the article because I thought game collectors would find it interesting.