A list of Yahoo Auctions in Japan recently appeared in the headlines of the collector’s community when it offered to buy a Nintendo Game & Watch that was so rare that many people were convinced it was fake.
As a super fan of Nintendo and author of the amazing Nintendo history Florent G book seriesorgies explains in the video below, this particular game and watch appeared in a retail store Donkey Kong box, but on the top plate was an illustration of three men, along with a commemorative note about Nintendo that had sold 20 million Game & Watch devices.
These notes have been seen before in other rare games and clocks, 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 completely unknown and had apparently never been Nintendo employees.
This fact, the style of illustration and some other small things, such as the lack of a serial number, made many people convinced that the unit was fake, but as GOrges explains, after some research, it turns out that the unit is likely to be legitimate and incredibly rare.
The three men were drawn by legendary artist Makoto Kano (who worked on everything from the original Metroid a Pokémon Stadium), and after having excavated by GOrgas and some friends discovered that the other two were not Nintendo employees, but partners involved in the production of Game & Watch hardware. Momose was the director of the factory that produced the aluminum plates found on each Game & Watch, while Ishida was an employee of that factory who was Nintendo’s direct contact.
G / O Media may receive a commission
Armed with all this information and probably one of the few that has ever been made (perhaps even just one for each of the men in the picture), Georges and a few other collectors came together to try to buy the unit at an auction. you could add it to your historical collections. Unfortunately, his Yahoo account was limited to a maximum bid of ¥ 1,000,000 and the winning bid ended up being … 1.000 1,000,000, but as Georges ends up saying in the video, there is always the hope that the buyer, realizing the rarity and value of the item, was also someone committed to preserving it, and he was maybe even Nintendo itself to add it to its next museum.
The following video is shown in French, but has appropriate English subtitles once you have activated them.