As lovers of all things rare and collectible, we like to keep our finger on the pulse of second-hand sites and keep an eye out for interesting items that might appeal to collectors. That’s a fancy way of saying that I like to procrastinate by trawling through eBay and Vinted, but hey, it pays off! While searching for Game Boy Color games yesterday, I came across this rare Game Boy Color Demo cartridge, a cart that was sent to stores ahead of the handheld’s release in order to advertise its capabilities to us, the Nintendo-loving public.
The cartridge itself brings up a screen of chalkboard writing advertising the fact that the Game Boy is now in Color, and that it plays over 400 Game Boy games with a color LCD screen. It then shows footage from Links Awakening DX, Tetris DX, and Wario Land II to entice people in. Wario and Mario make the cut too with their trademark antics – check out the video below to see them and the rest of the demo features in action.
The cartridge is being sold by Vinted store shipit, a collector who has multiple gaming and pop-culture finds from their travels around the UK. I chatted with the seller on the app and discovered that they are selling it from their personal collection and that they had originally discovered it while walking around a car boot sale. For anyone not in the UK, that’s an event where people sell belongings out of their cars in a big field, and you have to get up early to be in with a chance of striking gold.
Chatting with shipit on Vinted, they told me that they ‘didn’t actually know the cartridge’s value until they got home’, picking it up because it looked interesting. As a Nintendo fan they often keep an eye out for memorabilia after finding once finding a sealed copy of Pokémon Blue for the Game Boy – every Pokémaniac’s dream!
What a find that must have been; I guess when you leave in the morning to go look for treasure you don’t always expect to find a rare Game Boy cartridge staring back at you from a little trestle table in front of someone’s car! The cartridge is listed for £400 on Vinted, a price that reflects how rare this little slice of Nintendo history really is!
And if you’re looking to follow in shipit’s footsteps, they advise that you need to ‘get up early. It pays to avoid the dealers and go to the genuine sellers for the better deals,’ advice that collector Brent Scotchmer would undoubtedly agree with. Get the word out that you’re looking for games and be approachable – it pays to chat with people and not walk around with your headphones on!
