By
Anna Wilder and NICHOLAS INGRAM
A few years ago, a pop culture store owner in Wisconsin mentioned to Jason Ganos, a well-known Nintendo game collector, that he had a box of Super Mario cartridges that had been sitting in storage for years. It stopped Ganos in his tracks.It turned out to be an ultrarare collection of 97 “absolutely pristine” copies of Super Mario Brothers Duck Hunt, a popular Nintendo game that was released in 1988, Ganos said.After some initial research, Ganos found that the cartridges he held were not only a new variant of the game, but also the last known production date of it.Most of the cartridges will go up for sale Friday in an online auction that will run until Sept. 9.“I still don’t quite believe that any of this is happening,” Ganos said. “I just think it’s kind of serendipitous that this happened. It’s just still very bizarre to me.”
Ganos, a hard-core fan covered in Nintendo tattoos and who has operated Nintendo Wire, a news service for Nintendo announcements and nostalgia for over 10 years, said he would not venture to guess how much the games are worth.But when he saw the box, he immediately knew it was special.“It’s like pulling out like a Holy Grail,” Ganos said, later adding, “They’re gorgeous.”
