Super rare Pokemon Red prototype game sells for $100,000 at auction

A rare prototype cartridge of Pokemon Red has sold for $101,000 at auction, with the total price climbing to $123,220 after fees.

The 1998 development cartridge attracted 20 bids at auction, ultimately selling for over four times its original listing price of $25,000.

What’s on the cartridge

Unlike the retail red cartridge released for the Game Boy, the prototype features a transparent casing, exposed circuitry and a handwritten label reading “Red P.”

The cartridge was examined and authenticated by PSA, although technical limitations made reading all of available data not possible, according to Goldin.

Goldin described the prototype as “previously undocumented.”

PSA was able to recover the first 32KB, however, revealing that the game data it reviewed was identical to the final US release of Pokemon Red. The only differences were found in technical information stored on the cartridge.

The grading company believes that the remaining data would also match the finished game, although this could not be confirmed.

That being the case, there’s currently no evidence of unreleased Pokemon, unused content or other gameplay differences on the cartridge. Considering it’s been housed inside a protective case, unanswered questions are likely to remain that way unless the new owner decides to crack it and dig deeper than PSA did.

While the final sale figure is massive, it still pales in comparison to how much Pokemon cards can fetch. Earlier this month, a man sold his son’s collection of old cards for over $2 million.