It looked like an odd old Nintendo cartridge sitting among boxes of gaming memorabilia. But when video-game collector Rob Walters came across it at a New York garage sale in 2006, he had stumbled upon something that Nintendo had never intended to become a collector’s treasure.The cartridge was made specifically for Nintendo’s 1991 Campus Challenge, a nationwide gaming competition that took place at around 60 US college campuses and other locations. It combined three Nintendo games into a single custom cartridge: Super Mario Bros. 3, PinBot and Dr. Mario.Guinness World Records now lists the cartridge as the rarest Super Mario videogame, recording its 2009 sale for $20,100. According to Guinness, Nintendo destroyed the Campus Challenge cartridges after the tournament, except for one that had been retained by a Nintendo employee and eventually sold to Walters at the 2006 garage sale.
A special cartridge built for competition
Nintendo created the 1991 Campus Challenge as a follow-up to its hugely successful 1990 Nintendo World Championships. Instead of travelling primarily to major cities, the new competition brought Nintendo gaming to college campuses and spring-break destinations.According to the 2009 NintendoAGE eZine, the tour visited around 60 college campuses, with thousands of students competing for a chance to reach the national championship. The final competition took place in Orlando in January 1992, where Steven Lucas was crowned the National Champion for 1991.The custom cartridge was central to the competition. Players began with Super Mario Bros. 3, where they had to collect 25 coins. They then moved to PinBot and needed to reach 100,000 points before progressing to Dr. Mario. The combined score determined the competitor’s result.Unlike a normal Nintendo game, the cartridge was never designed for sale in stores. It contained specially modified versions of the games and included hardware for the tournament setup. The cartridge even had a phone jack, which was used to transmit player scores and names to a central computer. Those scores could then be displayed on a large screen behind the contestants.
Nintendo tried to make the cartridges disappear
Once the competition ended, the custom cartridges had little practical purpose outside Nintendo’s events. The NintendoAGE investigation published in 2009 said almost all of the cartridges were physically destroyed after the contest. The article reported that only one had been discovered at that point. It also noted that the person who ran the contest believed as many as three or four might have survived, meaning “only one known to exist” is more precise than saying only one was ever made.The surviving cartridge was eventually traced to a former Nintendo employee. In May 2006, photographs of a large collection of Nintendo competition cartridges appeared online. One unusual NES cartridge initially confused collectors because of its strange hardware and phone connection. When it was powered on and examined, its game list revealed what it really was: the 1991 Nintendo Campus Challenge cartridge.
The $1,000 garage sale haul
Walters’ discovery was even more extraordinary because the Campus Challenge cartridge was not the only Nintendo rarity he found that day. PriceCharting’s account of the garage sale says Walters stopped at the New York sale in August 2006 and discovered a collection belonging to a former Nintendo employee. Among the items were a 1990 Nintendo World Championships cartridge, the 1991 Campus Challenge cartridge, a 1992 Campus Challenge cartridge and other Nintendo promotional material.The seller told Walters he had previously worked for Nintendo and did not want the items publicly identified. Walters eventually paid $1,000 for the collection. PriceCharting later estimated the collection’s value at more than $50,000.The Campus Challenge cartridge alone would eventually account for a substantial portion of that value.
From $14,000 to $20,100
Walters later sold the 1991 Campus Challenge cartridge privately to collector J.J. Hendricks for $14,000 in July 2009. Hendricks did not hold on to it for long. Just three months later, he put the cartridge on eBay with a starting bid of 99 cents and no reserve. According to an interview with Hendricks published by RetroGaming with Racketboy, the price remained at about $8,500 until the final minutes. Then a burst of late bidding pushed the final price to $20,100.Guinness World Records records the same $20,100 result and identifies 2009 as the year of the sale.
