A prototype cartridge for the 1998 Game Boy game Pokémon Red has sold through Goldin for $101,000. With the buyer’s premium, the total comes to $123,220. Goldin says the lot drew 20 bids and finished far above its original $25,000 listing.
If you follow retro game collecting, that result makes sense. What gives this cart its pull isn’t the idea of some radically different build. It’s the fact that it’s a scarce piece of Pokémon development history tied to one of the most influential game releases ever.
Goldin described the cartridge as “previously undocumented,” and it doesn’t take much to see that this isn’t a standard retail copy. It has a transparent shell, exposed circuitry, and a handwritten “Red P” label.
PSA authenticated the cart, and that matters in a market where rarity and provenance can count for as much as the software itself, especially when Pokémon is involved.
PSA recovered the first 32KB and said that portion matches the final U.S. version of Pokémon Red, with differences limited to header data. So at this point, there’s no confirmed evidence of unreleased Pokémon, deleted areas, alternate mechanics, or any other hidden changes. PSA also said the unread portion likely matches the retail release as well, though technical limits leave some uncertainty there.
Still, prototype prices like this don’t rise on hidden content alone. Nostalgia, condition, presentation, grading, and plain rarity all push numbers up, and even in a collectibles market where rarer Pokémon cards and other items have sold for multimillion-dollar sums, this documented cart still touched off a bidding war.
Author: Emmanuel Bosque
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