Collector trades rare $20K Nintendo World Championships for Pokemon Red

A Pokemon game collector had to trade away one of the rarest video games ever made in Nintendo World Championships in order to acquire a sealed copy of Pokemon Red.

Nintendo World Championships is an extremely rare game and often retails for over $15,000 USD, with the special gold variant being more elusive and expensive.

The grey carts were given to finalists in the Nintendo World Championships, and it’s unknown exactly how many copies were made, further increasing its prestige.

That all said, for one collector, he was willing to trade the cart for a sealed copy of Pokemon Red.

As game collector Pat Contri explained on his podcast, he was baffled this trade even happened. “I cannot wrap my head around wanting, even if it’s sealed, a Pokemon Red game and giving up a Nintendo World Championships for that.”

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“We’re talking about a game that has historical cultural significance in video games that they only made a few hundred of at most… this is always a game people are after,” he added. “To trade that straight up, I don’t know the mentality behind that.”

The trade in question happened between Portland game store owner Josh Hamblin and an unknown party.

Hamblin had what he explained to be “the highest Red ever graded” with a “white ESRB seal 83% which is commonly accepted as the 1st print run.”

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According to Hamblin, the collector is a “very large Pokemon card collector who only collects very few video games,” and the copy he traded wasn’t even his best.

“He still has one of the nicest grey NWC carts in his collection,” he explained, adding that he even had a gold NWC, as well.

Furthermore, Hamblin said that the collector, “knew I had to be wowed with the trade offer to even consider it over a cash offer, because I was just content to wait it out since Gameboy hasn’t come close to peaking yet.”

That all said, Nintendo World Championships can fetch a pretty penny on auction. PriceCharting notes that three copies of the game were sold in 2019, selling for $23,000, $26,400, and $19,000.