Someone paid $55,000 for a zelda eprom cart on ebay

Careful with the way you word things. This isn't a standard dev PCB by any stretch. From all the NES protos that I've had come through my hands (200ish now?) along with all of the research I have done, this PCB is 100% unique to this proto. Protos will often be found on production boards, sometimes found on a fairly standard dev board (TKEPROM, SKEPROM, etc.), but to date, there has never been another SNP-TEST-02 PCB found. Like, literally zero.

I've seen it called standard a few times, I've seen others say it coud be easily faked, I strongly disagree with both comments.

Edit: SRP, not SNP

 

Oh THAT's what justifies the price tag...

 

lotta haters in here secretly wishing they had a nes cart worth 50 grand...

 

I remember the Final Fantasy II English proto was on eBay for $50,000 I thought even that was a bit much for an unreleased game of its nature. I understand the Nintendo dev nostalgia with this item but like many I can't justify the price paid for it. If it makes the buyer happy then that's great.

 

$55,000? You could buy yourself a nice car with that kind of money..

 

Personally, I think $55,000 is completely idiotic seeing that the code is identical to the final release, the yellow cart is not exclusive to this proto (normal yellow carts are available for less than $1000) and it's just the North American proto, not even the real Famicom Disk proto.

But as I said, I'd rather have rich people spending too much money on this than on a few bottles of wine or a stupid ass artwork. There are people out there who spend $55,000 just as a commission for their auction purchase and this auction purchase may have been a lousy so called "modern art" piece with a Firemen-joke on it. Other than that, we have people out there who spend $13,000,000 on a mass-produced car. It's just because video games tend to be much cheaper so that $55k seem to be completely absurd. But really, it's not... I think in a few decades from now on, we will have plenty of things selling in the thousands of dollars. Think of old toys, militaria, records... there are some very rare things out there, the fans just need to grow old enough to afford them and most video game collectors are either still under 40 or they gave up on the hobby before they got rich. But generally, the collector's market grows (before it'll diminish again when the first gamer generation dies in, let's say, maybe 50 years?).

 

I highly doubt that PCB is "unique" because Nintendo wouldn't make one or two PCBs. The same pcb was used in other places, I'm sure. While that is an interesting point that it uses a development board not seen before by collectors or publically, I still disagree with comments suggesting it is a prototype or extremely special. It does make for a case that it is not fake. I never stated it was absolutely fake, just suggesting that it could have been. Anyway.. Maybe people just value things really oddly, but I really don't see that item being worth $55,000USD. That's alot of money for what you are getting.

 

Gaijira, cool it otherwise you may see a ban for a week. mrmark has released many prototypes for free over the years, he's a good guy and well done to him for such a high sale. If you have a problem with that then keep it to yourself. It's not his fault someone wanted to blow a load of cash on his game. It's not like mrmark lied in his auction. I certainly wouldn't say no if someone offered me that much money for what I personally think is crap (Not a Zelda fan anyway) and neither would you.

 

Okay point taken

 

Then al is cool and happy in the land of ASSEMbler

 

it doesn't justify it's sale price and in my opinion if the current owner were to re-sell it at present then it would fetch substantially lower than $50k.

not saying that nothing is worth $50k though, for a true Ura-Zelda DD disk i'd be comfortable with spending that much.

 

Really appreciate the kind words. I do want to be clear as I likely wasn't before. This wasn't my auction personally and I didn't get a dime from it. Tom is a close personal friend of mine and my brother and I helped a bit with the sale and got a shout out as a result.

Mott: I gotta say man, when it comes to first hand experience, you're not going to find many people with more than me when it comes to straight NES protos. When I say unique to this proto, I mean that to date there has yet to be a single example of this PCB showing up ANYWHERE. Not in another proto, not loose, nowhere. I'm not implying it was produced as a one off. What I am saying is that in order to fake this, you'd have to get a copy of a PCB that has yet to show up anywhere in any capacity. If that is someone's prerogative, they can have at it. That being said, they'd probably be better offer printing of fake $100's.

 

I agree with you. And I'm glad you pointed that out. It helps to state the credibility that it is not fake. I still stand by thinking it's no way worth $55K but if that's what someone will pay for it, great for the seller. And it's still no prototype in my book. Identical to retail maskrom = not a prototype.

 

Surely it can still be considered a prototype, as it is *physically* different from the final product. Sure, the software inside is final... but I could think of many theoretical examples of a prototype product construction that has a final software build.

 

A prototype is a product that is used for testing purposes to see what can still be improved. It does not necessarily have to be different from the final product, the LAST prototype never is because that's what the final product is based on, but it's still a protoype.. given that it was indeed used for dev testing within NOA.

 

I don't think anyone is getting butthurt or angry here at all. Mrmark, you know we have nothing against you here, you're a respected member of the community and we value your imput.

Likewise, I see nothing wrong with someone saying the guy's an idiot for blowing 50k on a video game. That's their opinion.

A great friend of mine (sadly no longer with us) used to run a bicycle shop and collected Star Wars. Another guy I knew had a great Star Wars collection - he showed me it once, including his Blue Snaggletooth (a rare figure). He took great delight in telling me that he once swapped a Blue Snaggletooth for a bike - he took a bit of plastic and swapped it for a bike that he could use to go places. Needless to say, my friend told me a similar story of the time he took some bike from stock that he paid trade price for, and swapped it for a Blue Snaggletooth - one of the rarest figures and one he'd been after!

It goes to show you, people value things differently. So sure, the guy probably has his reasons for blowing that much on a game. I have to say, though, you're not going to find many people who'll say "Wow, great investment! I'd have spent 50k on that!" And I think it's perfectly fair to say he did it as an investment and/or as an attention-seeking publicity stunt, because I'm sure he didn't do it just to play the game and then burn it or sell it at a loss, and he'd have refused interviews if he didn't want to draw attention to himself.

As for whether it's a prototype or not, has anyone categorically stated if the ROM is the same as retail or not? If not, then again I'd say it's fair to speculate on that.

I'm very surprised that you did this as a favour, though. I know that my best friend would offer me a commission on it - even if it was only $1,000... or $100 even. Was it your eBay account? I hope he's at least going to pay your eBay fees, in that case!!

 

I pretty much agree with almost everything you've said here. Opinions will vary on whether or not the game was worth the cost of admission. Hell, If I spent a tenth of that on a single game, I'd be sleeping on the couch for a month (and it's my house!). I'll never buy a brand new car off the lot in my life, seems to me like throwing away cash when you can buy a model or two older for a steal. Different people live different lifestyles, I just wanted to make it clear that the buyer isn't just some random "sucker" who got conned into buying something that he wasn't crystal clear on what it was.

Tom is a good personal friend of mine outside of the gaming world. We live about an hour away from each other and he's just a solid guy all around. We try to get together when we can and watch the fights. It's his account, and I would never ask for a a cent for any help I gave him. Truth be told, we played a very, very small role in the whole thing. He's helped me countless times in the past with good deals as well, so it's all good

Anyway, sorry to get a bit over-defensive out of the gate. Won't happen again.

 

If I spent a tenth of that full stop, I'd be spending someone else's money! Alright for some! heh.

 

Hi, I wanted to clarify some things.

1. Final Fantasy II was listed by me. It was $50,000 OR BEST OFFER, which people conveniently ignore.

2. That list price was based on the Zelda sale. I saw someone paying that much money for a more-or-less identical retail game, so I wanted to see if I could attract that person to something I felt was an even more special collectible.

3. I did end up connecting to that same buyer, with whom I negotiated an offer with that was near to my asking price.

4. That buyer disappeared before the deal closed, and has not been responding to my emails since. My understanding is that he purchased the majority of the high-profile NES stuff (like the 5-digit VGA games) over this past year. From talking to some collectors who have dealt with him, it seems like he isn't buying anything now.

5. He DID see this as an investment -- as part of our negotiations, he wanted me to publicly reveal that Final Fantasy II was sold "to a museum." It was a for-profit museum. I think he believed that he was investing in merchandise that people would pay to see.

6. I dumped that Zelda prototype years and years and years ago, it is not 100% identical to final, though whatever differences there may be, they're extremely minor (someone very familiar with the game played through it and noticed nothing).

7. Interesting tidbit totally unrelated to the sale: this was Howard Phillips' copy of the game when he worked at Nintendo. He identified it recently.