Here’s a list of things I’ve found in my attic that I didn’t expect to find: A chewed up copy of The Beano Book 1985, and a dead pigeon. That’s it. That’s the list.
Given that my life is a farcical comedy of errors, I can’t imagine that I’d ever head up to my attic and come across a super rare NES game worth £7,000 – but fate smiles on Scott Amos of Reno in a way that it never has on me.
the Reno Gazette Journal reports (via Kotaku), that Scott was digging through some childhood possessions in the attic of his childhood home when he stumbled across an unopened copy of the oft-forgotten adventure game Kid Icarus, with a receipt dating the purchase from December 1988.
No one in the Amos family can quite remember why kid Icarus was left up in the attic for so many years, but the currently accepted theory is that it was simply bought as a Christmas present for Scott before someone put it away somewhere and forgot to give it to him.
As it turns out, not gifting Scott Kid Icarus for Christmas 1988 was probably the best Christmas present he could’ve received. After talking to a number of experts, it became clear he’d stumbled upon a goldmine.
Scott told the Journal:
It was kind of funny — I saw it was sealed, and I thought it was worth a couple hundred dollars. I go to work the next day and emailed a couple of experts. One of them wrote me back within 30 minutes and said, ‘You have an Easter egg.’
“To find a sealed copy ‘in the wild,’ so to speak, not to mention one in such a nice condition and one with such transparent provenance, is both an unusual and rather historic occurrence.”, said Heritage Auctions’ Valarie McLeckie. “We feel that the provenance will add a significant premium for serious collectors.”
She was not wrong. Scott managed to shift the NES game over the weekend for an eye-watering $9,000 dollars (roughly £7,400). He’s already split the loot 50-50 with his younger sister, and is planning a Disney World vacation next month.
“Instead of doing something responsible, we’re going to have some fun with it.” Scott is very much a man after my own heart.
Hopefully Scott and his family have an awesome time at Disney World, and whoever shelled out for the NES copy of Kid Icarus is a satisfied customer. On an unrelated note, does anyone want to buy a chewed up copy of The Beano Book 1985 or a dead pigeon? I’ll give you a good price.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.