A very rare copy of Stadium Events by Nintendo NES has reached a big of $99,850 on eBay, and the auction has six more days to go before the highest bidder wins.
Released in 1987, Stadium Events is one of the very first exercise games. It is estimated that only 2,000 copies of the game was produced, and only 200 of those were made available in stores before Nintendo NES recalled the game to repackage it with its "Family Fun Fitness" pad.
On its own, the game is very rare, but bidders are scrambling to get the highest bids because of the game's pristine condition. Seller menaceone says the game is one of the few to be sent to the Video Game Authority (VGA) in Roswell, Georgia, where it was official verified and authenticated. VGA awarded it an official grade of 85 out of 100 and preserved it inside an acrylic case where it will remain forever to protect it from damage.
"I did not realize the value until 2011, when a story came out about this game being sold on eBay for $44,000," says the seller in an interview with GameSpot. "I told my wife, 'I know I have that game.' I collect a lot of different items, so after looking through several boxes, I found it!"
He adds that he was not allowed to sell the game at the time because he was still an employee at Nintendo, which prohibits employers from making personal profits out of company products.
"When I left in 2012, it was possible for me to sell this game."
According to retro console website RacketBoy, Stadium Events is normally valued at $1,800 and $8,000. When the first factory-sealed copy of the game was put up for auction in January 2011, however, the highest bidder put up a winning bid of $22,800. Since then, demand for rare collectible games has exploded. Stadium Events started with an opening bid of $5,000 but more than 80 bids later, the amount has skyrocketed to astronomical levels.
Still, not everyone is convinced about the seller's expected windfall. As Chris Kohler of Wired magazine points out, the $100,000 bidder could easily be one of those auction trolls, who like to prank sellers by raising bids then abandoning the auction at the last minute. Looking at the item's bidding history, one would notice that bidders start making incremental bids at around the 13th bid, with the same bidders bumping up the prices in small amounts ranging from $100 to $200.
It's not the first time Internet rascals who aren't afraid of nothing but an unpaid item strike on eBay carried out their dirty tricks at online auctions. A dilapidated copy of "Nintendo World Championships," for instance, also racked up a hundred thousand dollars in bids by trolls, only to end up being sold for the original selling price of $5,000.
