How much would you pay for a rare gaming item? $10? $10,000? How about $15,000? James Baker, a video game memorabilia collector, paid $15,000 for only one of the 26 gold-colored NES cartridges in existence today. Manufactured in 1990, these uber-rare gold (not real gold, might I add) cartridges were made for the Nintendo World Championships. Other notable items in his massive collection are the N64DD, NES Deluxe Edition and a mint Atari Pong system.

When asked if he played the game after receiving it he said:

Well, when I first got it we fired it up at the office and played it for a while – and I didn’t even need to blow on the end of it to get it to work. But I have a friend who’s an architect and eventually we’re going to collaborate on building a really cool installation to put it into.

Ahh, I remember the days of blowing into cartridges to get them to work; few years later that myth was refuted on MythBusters.

NextGen