Reno, NV -- A Nevada man came across a perfectly packaged 1987 cult classic Nintendo game as he cleared out the attic of his childhood home — and it’s expected to sell for $10,000 at an online auction, according to a new report.
Scott Amostold The Reno Gazette Journalthis week he found an unopened copy of “Kid Icarus” on Mother’s Day after his mom asked him to pick up a few boxes of his childhood stuff from his childhood home.
As he went through his old belongings, he found the unused cartridge, still in the bag from J.C. Penney’s catalog department, Amos said.
The Dec. 8, 1988, purchase date indicates the game may have been intended as a Christmas present — but no one recalls buying it, he told the paper.
“All the family has been trying to come up with a hypothesis,” he said. “[My mom] thinks she put it there and never got it back out, and then it ended up in the attic.”
The game sold for $38.45 after taxes — more than $80 today.
But Amos was initially unfazed, leaving the cartridge on his kitchen counter, where his two young daughters could reach it.
“It was kind of funny — I saw it was sealed, and I thought it was worth a couple hundred dollars,” Amos told the paper. “I go to work the next day and emailed a couple of experts. One of them wrote me back within 30 minutes and said, ‘You have an Easter egg.'”
So he called his wife to move the game to another spot, out of his daughters’ reach.
“I didn’t want the kids pulling it down or coloring on it,” he said.
Valarie McLeckie, video game consignment director at Heritage Auctions, said in a press release issued to the paper that “Kid Icarus” “is one of the hardest NES titles to find in sealed condition.”
“To find a sealed copy ‘in the wild,’ so to speak, not to mention one in such a nice condition and one with such transparent provenance, is both an unusual and rather historic occurrence,” McLeckie said. “We feel that the provenance will add a significant premium for serious collectors.”
There are fewer than 10 factory-sealed copies of the game — based loosely on Greek mythology — in the hands of vintage game collectors, according to the report.
If the game nets the expected $10,000 at auction, Amos plans to split the proceeds 50-50 with his older sister.
“We’re going to do a Disney World vacation next month,” he said.
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