James Baker collects games, but probably not in the same way that any of us collect games. Baker recently coughed up $15,000 for one of the 26 gold-colored NES carts that were originally manufactured for the Nintendo World Championships in 1990 (only twelve are still accounted for) -- in fact, we're fairly certain that his is the cart we posted about recently.Speaking to Edge about his latest acquisition, Baker confesses that spending so much on a single videogame is "pretty crazy," but also says that he "doesn't really see it purely as a videogame."
Not only is the guy richer than us, he's also a lot braver -- when he received the cart, he popped it into his NES to give it a go! "I didn't even need to blow on the end of it to get it to work," he said, nonchalantly. You better believe that playing such a game would be the last thing on our minds. Instead, we'd be handling it very delicately, and then only after washing our hands several times over.
(Fun fact: $15,000 would cover the cost of 1.5m Wii Points, which in turn could be used to purchase the whole of the current U.S. Virtual Console line-up -- more than ten times over.)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-30-2008 @ 10:48PM
Jhongerkong said...
$15000!?
Thats like, a cheap mail-order bride right there!
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4-30-2008 @ 10:55PM
Jesus frias said...
...may i know what game is it? lol
im curious!!
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5-01-2008 @ 3:52AM
Kokomadeta said...
To my knowledge, it's just 3 timed, almost demo-like versions of games. I think Super Mario Bros. is one of them. If I'm not mistaken the cart has been dumped online. But, I may just be mistaken. You might want to hit Wikipedia or something.
4-30-2008 @ 11:05PM
xeleion said...
D:
-is mad that people are spending that much on NES games when he could be using that money for his crazy tuition costs.
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4-30-2008 @ 11:14PM
Roto13 said...
If I had $15,000 to piss away, I'd probably find something more meaningful to do with it.
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4-30-2008 @ 11:22PM
TheWarlock said...
Yeah, I'd probably do the surgical styled washing hands process, then burn them, making sure that they're sterilized, and THEN I would hug the cartridge. But seriously, 15,000 dollars? Christ, you could buy a lot more[better] wii games with that cash, assuming, ofc that he hasn't already.
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5-01-2008 @ 12:37AM
theb1rdm4n said...
Its over 9,000!!!!!!
Wait... Its over 15,000!!!!!!!
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5-01-2008 @ 12:43AM
Croove55 said...
Yes, yes, 15k is a lot to blow on an old, yet rare, NES cartridge. But (almost) everyone has a hobby, and Baker's is obviously collecting video games. He could have used the money for something else, something that would seem more useful to someone else, but why bother if that game is what makes him happy? Happiness is probably the best thing anyone could hope to get in exchange for their monetary wealth.
Hell, by comparison, a resident of a third world country would wonder why we spend hundreds of dollars on video games when we could be buying food to feed ourselves in the future. It's all perspective.
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5-01-2008 @ 2:15AM
Waffala said...
Are you saying in order to buy the entire North American virtual console catalog it would take roughly 1500$? Thank you wiifanboy for Monday Madness and spending those monies on us so we won't waste our own.
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5-01-2008 @ 9:02AM
Chris Greenhough said...
Yep, if my maths is correct, the U.S VC is worth 149,700 Wii Points.
* waits for someone to correct this *
5-01-2008 @ 11:56AM
Donald said...
Per Wikipedia (so it must be true):
66 games x 500 points = 33,000
45 x 600 = 27,000
86 x 800 = 68,800
11 x 900 = 9,900
12 x 1000 = 12,000
1 x 1200 = 1,200
= 151,900 points for every game on the North American VC.
5-01-2008 @ 2:41AM
DomoBraden said...
If I had $15k laying around I would've picked this up, doused it in gasoline, and uploaded the resulting video to YouTube, (you know... for the lulz). The comments would be epic.
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5-01-2008 @ 4:25AM
Silverbullet767 said...
I hope you know this is just an ordinary game that's been spray-painted gold, I could have bought an original, spray-painted it, then put it on ebay for suckers like this.
Hey, anyone wanna buy special limited edition golden beans??
Only £4,000,000 ono
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5-01-2008 @ 6:28AM
WhatIsThatThing said...
Yeah, you know, except for the part that only 12 copies of this game exist. TOTALLY worthless.
5-01-2008 @ 7:51AM
Pat said...
yeah. I mean, worthless.
But the game isn't that good. Even if it's rare,
baby moses is probabaly better than it.
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5-02-2008 @ 10:40AM
StarFoxA said...
I'd play it.
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