Stadium Events NES $1000-$5000

And now we are down to the final two games...and what collector's have come to call the "Holy Grails" of video game collecting. Stadium Events is the rarest officially licensed game on the NES, and is the rarest game that was actually available for purchase (the final game on my list was not commercially available, which is the only reason it is more rare than this one). Stadium Events is an Olympics type sports game that uses the NES Power Pad accessory, and was released as part of Bandai's "Family Fun Fitness" series. Right after its release...Nintendo purchased the rights to the Family Fun Fitness games, and started marketing the series for themselves. Stadium Events was immediately pulled from the shelves, and than re-named and re-packaged by Nintendo as "World Class Track Meet". Stadium Events and World Class Track Meet are the EXACT same games...with the lone exception of the title screens being different in each one.

While World Class Track Meet sells for $1 or less...a loose copy of Stadium Events sells for $1,000 or more. It has also been rumored that only around 10 complete copies of Stadium Events are in existence...so expect one of those to go for $5,000 and up if you are ever lucky enough to see one show up on Ebay. I'm sure all 10 of them are in the hands of collectors who proudly display them behind glass...so the odds of one of them ever being available for sale are next to nothing. It should be also noted, that Stadium Events was released in Europe as well...and the game cart for the European "PAL" version looks almost identical to the North American "NTSC" version. The European version is a lot more common, and usually sells for $150-$200 for a loose copy and $300-400 for a complete copy. You can instantly tell it's the PAL version by looking at the price...there is no way the NTSC version would sell for such a "small" amount of money.