One of the rarest video games on Earth just sold in Denton, Texas for $7,500 after a dealer in Texas decided to sell off his entire Nintendo video game collection.
The prized cartridge in question is a 1987 track and field game called, “Stadium Events".
"Stadium Events" is one of the most sought after rarities on the market, and can go for up to 15,000 on eBay. To provide a little history lesson; "Stadium Events" was released by Bandai in 1987 as one of the limited games available in America that was made in conjunction with the company's Family Fun Fitness mat, a soft, plastic controller you walked, ran, and jumped on to make the characters move.
Nintendo eventually bought the rights to the game and the fitness mat in 1988 and re-released them as "World Class Track Meet" and the Power Pad controller. To avoid consumer confusion, Nintendo pulled all copies of "Stadium Events" from shelves and had them destroyed, but not before about 200 copies had already been sold. Of those 200, collectors believe that only 10 to 20 complete copies of the game exist today, making them a real gem.
“The gameplay is actually horrible. The game is terrible,” said Michael McCaskill, an avid gamer and original owner of the rare collection. McCaskill was at a yard sale two years ago when he happened to stumble upon a box of old Nintendo games.
He paid $80 for about 40 games, and among that pile of nostalgia was “Stadium Events.” Unbeknownst to him, his $2 8-bit investment was worth nearly $8,000.
“I had no idea other than it looked familiar. That was it. Of course, it took Google and a phone to go, ‘Oh my god,’ ” said McCaskill. “(It’s crazy) to just go to your video game shelf and pick off a piece of plastic with a sticker on it that’s worth $8,000 that you didn’t pay anywhere near that for,” said McCaskill. “So you have to constantly pick it up and go, how lucky am I?”
After much thought, McCaskill decided to sell his treasure to a private customer for $7,500. “To have it in my store for the sole purposes of getting hands on with it, to verify that it was real…it’s phenomenal,” said Alec Featherstone, owner of Freaks and Geeks Video Games in Denton.
Featherstone helped authenticate the frequently bootlegged video game. Featherstone confirmed that McCaskill’s copy is one of only 200 known copies in the world. “Something, you know, that rare, you expect to see in a museum. You expect to see in someone’s collection where you can’t touch it…where it's completely handed off,” said Featherstone.
While he will miss seeing the game sitting on his shelf and collecting dust, McCaskill, and his wife are taking the money and putting towards buying themselves a home.
“She’s dead set we’ll find another one. I mean we were that lucky. Can lightning strike twice? I don’t know. I’d like to see it if it does,” said McCaskill. “If I found another one, I’m keeping it.”
