Mysterious and super rare Nintendo game and watch found at auction

A Yahoo Auctions listing in Japan recently made headlines in the collecting community when it offered for purchase a Nintendo Game & Watch that was so rare that many people were convinced it was fake.

As a super Nintendo fan and author of the amazing Nintendo history Florent G book seriesbarley explains in the video below, this particular Game & Watch has come into regular retail Donkey kong box, but on its top plate there was an illustration of three men, as well as a commemorative note on Nintendo having sold 20 million Game & Watch devices.

These notes have been seen in other rare Game & Watches before, but the presence of the three men here is what made this particular unit so mysterious. One was Nintendo legend Gunpei Yokoi, but the other two, Momose and Ishida, were complete strangers and had apparently never been Nintendo employees.

This fact, the style of illustration and a few other little things like the lack of a serial number convinced a lot of people that the unit was a fake, but like GOrges states, after some research it turns out that the unit was most likely legit, and incredibly rare at that.

The three men were drawn by legendary artist Makoto Kano (who has worked on everything since the original Metroid To Pokémon Stadium), and after some excavations by GBarley and a few friends discovered that the other two were not Nintendo employees, but rather partners involved in the production of Game & Watch material. Momose was the manager of the factory that produced the aluminum plates found on every Game & Watch, while Ishida was an employee of that factory who was Nintendo’s direct contact.

Armed with all this information, and being probably one of the few copies ever made (perhaps even just one for each of the men pictured), Georges and other collectors teamed up to try and buy the unit at auction. so that they could add it to their historical collections. Unfortunately, their Yahoo account was limited to a maximum bid of 1,000,000, and the winning bid was ultimately … 1,000,100, but as George ends the video by saying, there is still hope that the buyer, realizing the rarity and value of the item, was also someone who was committed to preserving it, and was maybe even Nintendo themselves in order to add it to their next museum.

The video below is in French, but English subtitles are available once you turn them on.