A Heartwarming tale - Mom gets $13k for her son's old NES

http://kotaku.com/5470923/mom-sells-old ... -for-13105

Kotaku wrote:A mom in North Carolina listed an NES and five carts on eBay last week for $9.99. Final winning bid: $13,105. One of the games in the lot happened to be the ultra-rare Stadium Events, in its original box.

What's Stadium Events? Well, according to its Wikipedia entry, it was a Bandai exer-game that used the Power Pad, originally known as the Family Fun Fitness mat; it's considered the rarest licensed NES game made available in North America. It was only released in a northern U.S. test market in 1987. In 1988, Nintendo bought the North American rights to the mat, re-released it as the Power Pad, and anything Family Fun Fitness branded was taken off the shelf and destroyed..

Fewer than 2,000 copies of the game were believed to have been produced, only 10 complete specimens are thought to exist, only one of them factory sealed.

The ebay listing - http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0330327400

Such a lovely story, I love the questions on the auction too:

Q: Hey. I'm from the NA [NintendoAge] forums. Glad to see you made it over. You can trust the people there. This is as exciting to them as it would be for an NFL player to win the Super Bowl. Please let this go the distance. Don't let some smooth talker try to talk you into ending it early. This is truly a momentous occasion in Nintendo collecting. Best of luck with everything George

A: Ty so very much for your help on this ...and I agree, the folks on nintendoage.com are TOTALLY AWESOME!...Talking to them was like talking to family....they are extremely caring and welcoming (not to mention the loads of help that they have provided me with on the sale of this auction item)....they sure give you that down home country feel:).........Angel

Awww.

EDIT: the NintendoAge thread is ace! http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/messag ... adid=28680

Awwww

The guy on the first page of that thread called $13,000 as well

Nice story, but almost a huge strawberry float up by the mom. $9.99???? Thank god it was on ebay and she didn't go to a local games store. :shock:

Weren't a Pinktendo though was it.

andretmzt wrote:Nice story, but almost a huge strawberry float up by the mom. $9.99???? Thank god it was on ebay and she didn't go to a local games store.

In fairness how would she know some sad bastard would fork out 13 grand for it.

Wow that's brilliant, I wonder how long it was before she twigged it was really worth something.

I wonder who's getting to keep the money.

The son or her. :lol:

Boo! wrote:
andretmzt wrote:Nice story, but almost a huge strawberry float up by the mom. $9.99???? Thank god it was on ebay and she didn't go to a local games store.

In fairness how would she know some sad bastard would fork out 13 grand for it.

It's not about expecting to get 13k, it's thinking 'Oh this is old, maybe it is collectable, lemme check'.

I got Starwing Competition Edition for £4 from GameStation a few years back. It became a burden; I was terrified of breaking or losing it, and had no real interest in it, so I sold it on eBay for £80 to some guy in the states.

But still, good deal on that.

andretmzt wrote:
Boo! wrote:
andretmzt wrote:Nice story, but almost a huge strawberry float up by the mom. $9.99???? Thank god it was on ebay and she didn't go to a local games store.

In fairness how would she know some sad bastard would fork out 13 grand for it.

It's not about expecting to get 13k, it's thinking 'Oh this is old, maybe it is collectable, lemme check'.

Home Video gaming about 30 years old, tops. It's not exactly a strawberry floating antique.

TheTurnipKing wrote:
andretmzt wrote:
Boo! wrote:
andretmzt wrote:Nice story, but almost a huge strawberry float up by the mom. $9.99???? Thank god it was on ebay and she didn't go to a local games store.

In fairness how would she know some sad bastard would fork out 13 grand for it.

It's not about expecting to get 13k, it's thinking 'Oh this is old, maybe it is collectible, lemme check'.

Home Video gaming about 30 years old, tops. It's not exactly a strawberry floating antique.

What? So it isn't collectible now? :roll:

$13k for a crappy NES game :lol:

andretmzt wrote:
TheTurnipKing wrote:
andretmzt wrote:
Boo! wrote:
andretmzt wrote:Nice story, but almost a huge strawberry float up by the mom. $9.99???? Thank god it was on ebay and she didn't go to a local games store.

In fairness how would she know some sad bastard would fork out 13 grand for it.

It's not about expecting to get 13k, it's thinking 'Oh this is old, maybe it is collectible, lemme check'.

Home Video gaming about 30 years old, tops. It's not exactly a strawberry floating antique.

What? So it isn't collectible now?

No, i'm just suggesting that it's no surprise the fact that it never occured to the mum that games that often fetch about £5 on ebay might actually be worth $13,000 to someone, especially if one assumes that she doesn't have a lot of connection with video-gaming.
:roll:

It's not even the game they want. It's the box.

Not as heartwarming as it could have been. I was expecting her to have no arms or something.

Some little boy's mum trades on ebay under the name lace_thongs35. D'aww.

Roonmastor wrote:It's not even the game they want. It's the box.

The box is the unique part, I suppose - the game is probably identical to the later Nintendo release.

pyxl-8 wrote:Some little boy's mum trades on ebay under the name lace_thongs35. D'aww.

She's like an '80es pornstar :lol:

pyxl-8 wrote:Some little boy's mum trades on ebay under the name lace_thongs35. D'aww.

Now my heart is warmed.

So, the boy's still alive? I read the title and assumed she'd been selling off some of her dead son's stuff to get out of debt or something, being lifted out of tragedy somewhat by unknowingly auctioning something that attracted this kind of miraculous attention.

Now it's just a story about some loft clear out. Not heart-warming at all.

A Heartwarming tale - Mom gets $13k for her son's old NES

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