A copy of the original Castlevania on the NES has sold at auction for over $US90,000 (over $136,000 AUD).
As spotted by Games Radar, an incredibly rare copy of Castlevania — first-run, boxed, sealed, with a hang tag (the little plastic hanger on the back of the box that lets retailers hang it from a hook in-store) — sold on eBay for $90,100. The game, considered a “raw” copy by collectors, was originally put up for sale at $US30,000 and sparked an intense bidding war. All for a game with a sticker price of $27.87.
It’s understood that this copy of Castlevania came from an estate sale in Texas. It appears the seller bought a collection of old video games from a deceased estate and has been slowly selling them to other collectors. On a previous auction for a copy of Kid Icarus that fetched over $US80,000, the seller stated that they themselves are not a collector of classic games. “I am not a game player or collector. I am a reseller who bought the estate of an avid game collector. I will list items to the best of my ability and try to describe games accurately. They are not graded and I am not familiar with how to grade video games.”
Sure enough, the game is ungraded. That’s what they mean when they call it a “raw” copy; similar to collector cards or comics, a raw game is one that has not been assessed, valued and graded by a third-party service. To collectors, if you were to buy any game off the shelf at your local EB Games, you’d be buying a “raw” copy.
The bidder that came in second place, a collector called Grailmonster who hunts rare or Holy Grail games just like this, speculated on his Instagram account that this “raw” copy of Castlevania could be flipped by a savvy collector for as much as $250,000. “Win some, lose some,” he wrote, “Congrats to the winner (I know him and he deserved it way more than me). Curious to see the future of this piece. It’s a $250K flip IMO. To my knowledge, this is the most a raw game has ever sold for.”
The lucky winner was apparently Tom Curtin, a well-known collector, who also took to Insta to share his victory. “The search is over after 23 years,” he wrote. “I resigned to never being able to add this grail after years of searching. But, everything just came together for a childhood friend and I this week as we were able to obtain this absolute beauty. This was the first game my mom ever bought me. I still remember the phone call we made to buy it. It’s a core memory, as is this past week. Couple more plane rides to go, but this beautiful first print hangtag Castlevania is almost home.”
The final sale price follows a trend in recent years of retro games fetching absolutely insane prices on the resale market. I hope Mr Curtin and his co-buyer enjoy this beautiful (and eye-wateringly expensive) copy of Castlevania.
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