Kid Icarus, one of the classics for the Nintendo Entertainment System, made a man from Reno, Nevada thousands of dollars richer after he found a sealed copy of the game in his attic.
Scott Amos was cleaning out the attic of his childhood home when he discovered the sealed copy of Kid Icarus. It was found in its original J.C. Penney bag, accompanied by a receipt that shows it was purchased on December 8, 1988 for about $38.
Amos assumed that the game was a Christmas gift from his mother that she forgot to give him. He knew nothing about collecting vintage video games, so he thought the unopened copy of Kid Icarus would be worth a couple hundred dollars on eBay.
Fortunately, Amos decided to contact Wata Games, which grades the condition of video games for collectors. The CEO of the Denver-based company, Deniz Kahn, told Amos that if it is authentic, the game was “something special.”
“I remember calling my wife, and I’m like, ‘hey, you know that game I left? Please put it somewhere important. I don’t want the kids drawing on it or anything or opening it,’ ” said Amos.
Amos shipped the item to Wata Games, which graded the box’s condition as an 8 out of 10 and the wrapper as an A, with A++ being the highest grade. Kahn then connected Amos to Heritage Auctions, through which the sealed copy of Kid Icarus was sold for $9,000.
There are less than 10 known sealed copies of Kid Icarus owned by video game collectors worldwide, and it is even rarer to find a vintage game with its original price tag and receipts, according to Heritage Auctions video game consignment director Valarie McLeckie.
Some pretty cool things sometimes turn up in auctions, such as a Wiimote prototype that Nintendo made not for the Wii, but for its predecessor, the GameCube. The device did not sell as much as Amos’ sealed copy of Kid Icarus, but it remains an interesting piece of video game history.
Earlier this year, a similar auction for a sealed copy of a NES game sold for $100,000. The game, of course, was Super Mario Bros., arguably the most iconic Nintendo franchise that retains its popularity to this day.
