CGC-certified NWC Grey Cartridge Prompts Fierce Bidding in Goldin Sale

Bidding for this holy grail of eSports history was already near $50,000 several days before the sale is set to end.

Posted on: 7/8/2024

A Nintendo World Championships 1990 cartridge graded by CGC Video Games™ is attracting attention in an ongoing Goldin sale. The Nintendo World Championships cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System (1990) is graded CGC 6.0, and bidding was up to $48,000 several days before the sale ends on July 13, 2024.

The 1990 Nintendo World Championships were the first major eSports event in US history. Nintendo toured 29 cities across America, inviting contestants to participate in regional competitions to qualify for a national championship held at Universal Studios Hollywood. Contestants who participated in the national championships used this special 1990 Nintendo World Championships grey cartridge to compete in their respective events.

The grey cartridge included minigame versions of three NES titles: Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer and Tetris, which could each be loaded by using visible DIP-switch timers on the cartridge. After the national event, all of the championship’s finalists received one of these grey cartridges as a memento of their participation. Though hundreds of these special cartridges were created, used and given away to finalists, less than 100 are still known to exist today, and less than a fraction of the surviving examples are as well-preserved as this CGC-certified cartridge.

On July 18, Nintendo is releasing a port of the Nintendo World Championships cartridge on the Nintendo Switch, called the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. This new and improved version of the historical eSports NES cartridge will introduce a new generation of gamers to the excitement and nostalgia that video game enthusiasts felt in the 1990s, and it will undoubtedly draw more attention to the original 1990 NWC cartridge whenever an example comes to auction in the future.

Other CGC-certified video games being offered by Goldin include:

  • a complete in box Duck Hunt for the Nintendo Entertainment System (1986) graded CGC 8.0 with CIB grades of 7.5 for Box, 8.5 for Cartridge and 7.5 for Manual
  • a complete in box Pinball for the Nintendo Entertainment System (1986) graded CGC 9.0 with CIB grades of 9.0 for Box, 9.0 for Cartridge and 8.0 for Manual
  • a complete in box Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! for the Nintendo Entertainment System (1987) graded CGC 8.0 with CIB grades of 7.5 for Box, 9.2 for Cartridge and 8.0 for Manual
  • a complete in box Castlevania for the Nintendo Entertainment System (1989) graded CGC 9.0 with CIB grades of 8.5 for Box, 9.8 for Cartridge and 9.4 for Manual
  • a complete in box The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1992) graded CGC 9.6 with CIB grades of 9.6 for Box, 9.6 for Cartridge and 9.2 for Manual