Sealed NES Castlevania Sold For $90,000 Because It Was "The First Game My Mom Ever Bought Me"

It gotta be part of some kind of money laundering, right?

Imagine spending nearly a million on games you can play on modern systems for 20 dollars MAX.

I’m not really sure that the buyers “hit the jackpot” at those ridiculous prices. The estate likely did, but certainly not the buyers.

@GravyThief My read of it is that they likely got a really good deal at the estate sale and then turned around and sold them as reported here. In that case, the original buyers did hit a jackpot. The final buyers, not so much, but they're probably happy all the same.

Insane. I can only assume the person(s) buying these figure their money is going to start evaporating the way they tossed that much cash at a game.

@sdelfin Correct, the article states that the folks who bought the games at the estate sale, turned around and resold them on eBay, as shown in the pictures in the story here.

I love the accusations of money laundering every time this comes up like people aren't spending millions on pokemon cards, and stuff like that all the time. Money laundering happens of course, but really our civilization has lost it's grip on reality.

I’ve got NES cartridges and they’re useless to me. If they were sealed they’d still be useless, but some dude would unload a wheelbarrow of cash for them.. what a world

Sure it's a true gem to find games that are 40-ish years old sealed. But paying such amounts for them, I wonder if the people buying them are really collectors, or just so rich they don't know what to do with their money. What a world.

@PinballBuzzbro My thoughts. You like the game so much, get a poster or some art work of your favorite games.

@PinballBuzzbro *nearly a tenth of a million

What I don't quite understand is the sentiment behind this purchase. If the core memory is of the copy their mum bought for them, then surely that original copy from years ago is worth infinitely more to them than this unrelated sealed version ever would be?

You could have bought a loose or even boxed copy of Castlevania for so much less. That would be fine for me and countless others.

@Sketcz Yes, but those sealed WATA investors/speculators just want people to see video games as art and not toys. It's not about the value. I'm being sarcastic of course.

Yes yes the only way to remember your mother buying you Castlevania is to spend 90,000 on a collector's item which by definition will never ever get played. It's surely the only copy of Castlevania available anywhere; without this you might as well forget she ever existed.
Honestly I don't care too much about these speculators but dressing it up with such an obviously fake story for "scene cred" is just distasteful.

I guess to be fair, perhaps when he was 9 years old his mother took him down to Heritage Auctions and bought him a $90000 copy sealed in plastic and it's me who is being distasteful.

@Sketcz Thanks for the link! Was unaware of this guy until now.

Interesting to me is the ‘Fedco’ price sticker. I had never heard of before. Turns out was membership department store chain only located in southern Calif that went defunct in 1999.