It's the dream scenario for a retro collector: finding an overlooked box of games and cracking it open to discover something absolutely unprecedented. That's what happened for Jason Ganos, a self-described "Nintendo super fan," who found a box full of Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridges for NES in pristine condition thanks to a friend at a local retro game shop. The best part? These 97 cartridges are likely from the game's final production run – an absurdly rare variant that had never previously been discovered.
Sometime in the '90s, the owner of a precious metal recovery business bought this box of Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt carts, and they were "supposed to be melted down and salvaged for the gold on the contacts of the pins," as Ganos writes on Nintendo Wire, the news site where he serves as editor-in-chief.
