<\/p>\n
When Jason Ganos was asked to help sell an old box full of NES cartridges, he figured they would be pre-owned copies of games that had already been circulated in the market. He had no idea that he was about to make a historic discovery that would change his life forever.<\/p>\n
Waukesha, Wisconsin is a suburb of the greater Milwaukee metropolitan area that boasts around 71,000 people. Its downtown center looks like it jumped straight out of the ’50s, packed with old-fashioned soda shops, classic burger joints, and antique stores.<\/p>\n
One of these stores is a vintage collectibles shop called OneStopWonders, owned by collector Kevin Braun. It\u2019s got everything from VHS tapes, retro games, vintage clothes, and anything else a nostalgic Gen X \/ Millennial could want. Jason Ganos, owner of the website NintendoWire and an avid Nintendo fan, began working with Braun three months ago, initially helping him repair old pinball machines.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n After learning of Ganos\u2019 website, Braun asked him if he\u2019d be willing to help him sell some video games that had been languishing in his stock. At first, these were fairly normal titles for the PlayStation, GameCube, and Super Nintendo \u2014 but then Braun hit him with a doozy.<\/p>\n According to the shop owner, a seller came into his store with a box of NES cartridges six years ago. These had somehow ended up with the seller\u2019s grandfather, who supposedly worked for a precious metal recovery service. The seller claimed that Nintendo had wanted to get rid of its stock quickly, and rather than dumping the cartridges, sold them to the recovery service for a small sum, allowing the service to extract gold from the circuit boards.<\/p>\n Speaking to IGN, Ganos admitted that he found the tale a bit fantastical \u2014 but it wasn\u2019t nearly as wild as what was actually in the box. <\/p>\n This box, full of 97 copies of undisributed, unique variants of Super Mario Bros. \/ Duck Hunt, had been sitting in Braun’s storage unit for years. Image Credit: Jason Ganos<\/p>\n The rectangular box, outfitted with three stickers with both English and Japanese text, had been sitting in Braun\u2019s storage unit collecting dust for the last six years. One of the box\u2019s stickers said that it had been shipped on December 1, 1995, while another revealed what was stored inside: 100 pcs of Super Mario Bros. \/ Duck Hunt for the NES.<\/p>\n This came as a surprise to Ganos, who noted that Duck Hunt was a pack-in game that came with a purchase of an NES console. By December 1995, the NES was already fairly late into its life cycle, making things even stranger.<\/p>\n Inside the box were 97 individually-wrapped copies of Super Mario Bros. \/ Duck Hunt with a manual on the back of each cart. There\u2019s no telling where the other three copies went, but Ganos was initially convinced that they couldn\u2019t be very valuable, given that Duck Hunt was one of the most widely-distributed games for the NES. However, he was quickly proven wrong after uploading photos of the haul to a collector Facebook group, which he swiftly deleted after learning just how mind-blowing his discovery really was.<\/p>\n Each cart was individually wrapped in plastic baggies, something PSA experts say helped preserve them so immaculately. Image credits: Jason Ganos<\/p>\n Ganos says that he was approached by a director of one of the world\u2019s biggest grading companies, as well as a director of PSA Games, who both warned him that something \u201cseemed off\u201d about the carts and asked him to take extensive photos of the inside of one of the games, circuit boards and all. <\/p>\n \u201cThey both told me the same thing: \u2018These are either fake, or these are brand-new, never-before-seen variants of these games,\u2019\u201d he told us. \u201cLike, the back label is different. The manual has different language in the back. There\u2019s different dates listed in the back of the manual. The motherboard is completely different. There\u2019s text on the motherboard that is not on any known copies of Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n Judging by what they could see on the manual, these copies of Duck Hunt were manufactured in late 1993, making them the latest prints of the game that have ever been seen thus far. Naturally, this one-of-a-kind find drew lots of attention on the Facebook group, prompting him to take down the post and immediately contact PSA for authentication.<\/p>\n PSA encapsulated each cart along with its manual, pioneering a totally new encapsulation method. Image credit: PSA, Jason Ganos<\/p>\n Mere hours later, Ganos was on a plane to California with a suitcase packed with all 97 cartridges, terrified they\u2019d get confiscated by TSA or worse, dismantled by the agency. Luckily, that didn\u2019t happen, and PSA was able to confirm that all 97 copies were totally legit. Not only that, but five of them were perfect 10s \u2014 a number that PSA had never given to an NES cartridge before. (The total breakdown is: 60 9.8s, 31 9.6s, five 10s, and one 9.4.)<\/p>\n Speaking with IGN, Head of PSA Video Games, Claire Shelton, described her thoughts after seeing the cartridges for herself.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were shocked,\u201d she told us. \u201cIt almost felt too good to be true. We\u2019ve looked at so many examples over the years. Our graders have graded hundreds of thousands of examples across all platforms, and it\u2019s often the case with tens where you almost start doubting yourself. You\u2019re like, \u2018I must be missing something. There\u2019s no way it could be perfect.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u201cWe look at so many things, and everything has at least some flaws, so for these to be as good as they were\u2026 we\u2019re looking for perfection, or at least as close to it as you can come. Because with injection-molded parts, there\u2019s always going to be pulloff lines right from where something is detached from a mold, or just the intricacies of manufacturing are going to leave things with a little bit of inconsistency. We were very grateful to be able to identify four of these that met that standard.\u201d<\/p>\n Out of 97 carts, PSA graded five of them a perfect 10. Image Credit: PSA, Jason Ganos<\/p>\n The haul was so special that PSA serialized the entire collection, encapsulating each copy along with its manual, something the company has never done before.<\/p>\n But what makes these copies so special? The fact they were unopened straight from the manufacturer, that they were a new variant with a manual on the back of each cart, and that they boasted a bilingual back label,” Shelton explained.<\/p>\n \u201cThere just aren\u2019t very many of those, and for Nintendo to have gone out of its way to create a new variant for whatever reason, then presumably not letting any of those see the light of day\u2026 it would be pretty unusual for Nintendo to do a new sticker variant for literally 100 copies. You\u2019d typically expect that number to be much, much higher, like into the thousands for revisions, especially for a game like Mario \/ Duck Hunt, which had many millions of copies sold in its lifetime,\u201d she told us.<\/p>\n Each cart came with a manual on the back. Image Credit: PSA, Jason Ganos<\/p>\n However, the MVP of these copies\u2019 pristine condition wasn\u2019t Braun\u2019s temperature-controlled storage unit; Shelton said that if it hadn\u2019t been for the plastic baggies that each cartridge was stored in, they would have most certainly been in worse shape.<\/p>\n \u201cEven without movement, dust can cause scratches and micro-wear over time. If these had not been bagged, I feel confident saying that there would not have been any tens. Those bags did a whole lot of work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Now, for the big question: What\u2019s the dollar amount of these cartridges\u2019 value? Shelton admitted that she couldn\u2019t say for certain, but speculated they could land somewhere in the four-to-five-figure range.<\/p>\n \u201cFour digits would be the floor,\u201d she told us. \u201cMultiple thousands of dollars, for sure. Given that the public will be able to ascertain that the 10 rate was roughly 4%, I think it could easily be in the five digits. I wouldn\u2019t expect it to exceed the five digits, but I\u2019ve been surprised before and I\u2019d love to be surprised here. I do think this is the kind of thing that, given the novelty and if you\u2019re a betting person, I wouldn\u2019t expect more of these to show up, and the odds that they\u2019re gonna be in better condition than these is also quite unlikely.\u201d<\/p>\n This variant of Super Mario Bros. \/ Duck Hunt has never been seen before. Image Credit: PSA, Jason Ganos<\/p>\n On August 12, three of these cartriges will go up for auction through Goldin Auctions. The auction will run for three weeks, ending tentatively on September 9. Ganos told us that he would also like to auction one of the carts off for charity, though no concrete plans for this have been set in place just yet.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels completely surreal that this happened,\u201d Ganos admitted. \u201cI think it makes it even more surreal that I happened to live in this tiny little small town, with this tiny little downtown area, with a tiny little retro shop, and I ended up making friends with the guy who had this thing in storage for six years.<\/p>\n \u201cNintendo has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. And Mario Brothers Duck Hunt is the very first video game I ever remember playing, so it\u2019s surreal and it\u2019s fantastical, and I\u2019m just happy that this all fell on my lap. It just feels really cool to be part of this type of Nintendo history.\u201d<\/p>\n Image Credits: PSA, Jason Ganos<\/em><\/p>\n Virginia (she\/her) is IGN\u2019s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she\u2019s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at <\/em>@TheeMissGlaze<\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Jason Ganos was asked to help sell an old box full of NES cartridges, he figured they would be pre-owned copies of games that had already been circulated in the market. He had no idea that he was about to make a historic discovery that would change his life forever. Waukesha, Wisconsin is a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[120,6295,9626,9546,9628,8594,1074,165,185,9627,459],"class_list":{"0":"post-10657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news","8":"tag-bros","9":"tag-collector","10":"tag-discovers","11":"tag-duck","12":"tag-haul","13":"tag-historic","14":"tag-hunt","15":"tag-mario","16":"tag-super","17":"tag-unreleased","18":"tag-version"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}10 Best NES Games of All Time<\/h3>\n