The Mario Cartridges That Accidentally Became Gaming History
A video game can become collectible for all sorts of reasons. It might be an early production run, a promotional edition, a game that flopped when it launched, or simply a cartridge that survived decades in remarkable shape. These 97 copies of Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt took a much stranger route to becoming desirable: they were supposed to be destroyed.
The discovery began with a box in Waukesha, Wisconsin, containing 97 cartridges that had once been destined for a precious-metals recovery facility. Nintendo had contracted the operation to dismantle old cartridges and reclaim the small amount of gold used on their circuit-board contacts. The shipment was headed there, but somehow never made it.
For years, the games remained out of sight. Their existence came to light when longtime collector Jason Ganos, publisher of Nintendo Wire, was helping Kevin Braun work through inventory at One Stop Wonders, Braun's retro gaming store. Braun recalled a box that had been sitting in storage for years after being purchased from a seller whose grandfather had worked for the recovery company Nintendo used. The family had apparently regarded the cartridges as little more than scrap.
What was inside turned out to be far more interesting. The box held 97 cartridges, each separately wrapped and accompanied by its original manual. At first glance, they were nothing extraordinary. Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt was among the NES's most commonly distributed games, and Braun had been preparing to sell the cartridges for around $15 each. Ganos, however, started noticing details that didn't fit.
The original packaging carried Nintendo inventory stickers identifying the contents as "Mario – Hunt Remanufactured NES." The paperwork listed 100 cartridges, meaning three had disappeared somewhere along the way, and showed a shipment date of December 19, 1995. Yet the cartridges themselves contained manufacturing codes pointing to late August 1993 — roughly two years after the final known printing of a bundle Nintendo had already discontinued in 1991.
That discrepancy prompted a closer examination, and the discovery quickly attracted attention from the grading world. Executives from two different grading companies saw photographs of the collection and requested additional documentation. One specifically asked to inspect a cartridge's internal circuit board. Once Ganos opened one, it became clear the box contained something much more unusual than a stash of well-preserved NES games.
The cartridges represented a previously undocumented version of Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt. Collectors could distinguish it from known variants through changes to the rear label, manufacturing codes and even the wording in the accompanying manual. One line, for example, uses "maintenance or service" where other versions say "maintenance or repairs."
The production date raises the biggest unanswered question: why did Nintendo manufacture another batch of a discontinued game?
Ganos and Braun have proposed a couple of possibilities. The cartridges could have been intended as replacement inventory for warranty work or refurbished NES systems, or they may have been prepared for a retail package that was ultimately abandoned. At this point, neither explanation has been confirmed.
Whatever prompted Nintendo to make them, the surviving cartridges appear to represent the final production run of the NES Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combination — and a version collectors had never previously documented. That distinction is what gives the find its real value. The game itself is hardly scarce; used copies can still be found cheaply. What makes these remarkable is the combination of an unknown manufacturing variant and extraordinary condition.
The grading results underline just how well they survived. Five cartridges received a perfect 10 from Professional Sports Authenticator, while another 60 earned 9.8, 31 received 9.6 and one came back at 9.4. According to AP, that made the discovery the first NES cartridge to receive PSA's highest possible grade from its video-game division. Ganos has acknowledged that putting a price on the entire collection is difficult because there is no obvious comparable sale.
The first three cartridges, including one of the PSA 10s, went to auction through Goldin on August 12, with additional copies expected to be offered later. Ganos and Braun intend to retain some of the collection and put others into future sales and charity auctions.
There is a delicious irony in what happened to these games. Nintendo's original calculation treated the cartridges as disposable objects whose most useful remaining asset was the trace amount of precious metal inside them. More than 30 years later, the economics have completely reversed. Nobody cares about the gold. The things that matter are the manufacturing codes, packaging, labels and a single altered phrase in an instruction manual — tiny details that turned ordinary inventory into something collectors had never seen before.
The story also illustrates how much gaming history is preserved without anyone deliberately trying to preserve it. Nintendo manufactured millions of NES cartridges, most intended to be played until they wore out and eventually discarded. This particular run survived because it was overlooked by a recovery operation, then because someone valued the box at roughly the price of scrap, and finally because a collector happened to take a closer look.
They were supposed to disappear for the gold in their contacts. Instead, they survived long enough for the gold to become the least interesting thing about them.