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We love obscure video game merchandise and history here at Nintendojo and this story has a little bit of both going for it.
Way back during E3 2002, Nintendo was promoting the then yet-to-be-released-in-the-US Nintendo e-Reader (it would launch in September of that year) by passing out packs of e-Reader cards to attendees on the show floor. Each pack contained a card featuring Kirby, which were used solely for running a competition and would yield certain prizes when scanned (or a lack thereof). Most cards resulted in no prizes, but 100 of them yielded second-place prizes while 10 granted a first-place prize.
It’s not just the tiny number of these first-place cards which make them incredibly rare, but the fact that they needed to be given to a Nintendo rep in exchange for the prize and were subsequently destroyed upon relinquishing them. So for the sake of video game memorabilia preservation, we can be grateful that someone considered the card more valuable to them than the prize and kept the card (or just forgot to turn it in for the prize, or just kept it for who knows what reason).
While the card hasn’t undergone independent inspection for authenticity and grading, the seller — a 16-year eBay seller with a 100% rating — has posted a video to YouTube showing the card being swiped on an e-Reader and displaying the first-place prize messaging.
At the time of writing, the auction price for the card is sitting at $9,999 (and actually increased by $499 in the time it took me to write this piece). So if you’re feeling a hole burning in your pocket and really want to add this incredibly rare piece of video game memorabilia to your collection, you’ve got a couple days to get your bid in.
Source: Nintendo Wire
