Extra-Rare NES Cartridge Auction Was One Giant Troll-Fest

Last week, one of the world’s rarest video games went up for sale on eBay giving one lucky collector with a lot of disposable income the chance to own a piece of gaming history. The bids reached a ridiculously high level but the seller may not get the coins he deserves to collect.
The Nintendo World Championships NES cartridge, a rare game only used in NES championship tournaments that can sometimes sell for thousands of dollars, appeared on an eBay account last week with an opening, minimum bid of $5,000. The auction attracted a lot of Internet traffic and eventually amassed a staggering, final amount of $99,902 in bids but according to ScrewAttack, the seller may never see a check. It turns out that a community of trolls were just driving the price up to amuse themselves with the seller’s inevitable, crushing feeling of failure. A Wired reporter talked to the original seller who said that the highest bidder refused to pay the money that he promised him probably because he doesn’t have it if he’s spending all his time trolling high priced eBay auctions.
Of course, there’s only so much that the seller and eBay can do so he’ll probably just have to make a deal with a private seller offline. It’s likely that he won’t put it on sale again on the web for the rest of us to enjoy since it’s sure to attract more trolls with nothing but time on their hands and an evil sense of self gratification to amuse themselves. Way to go, Internet. You’ve ruined an important piece of gaming history.