The Escapist Issue #116 Now Available

The Escapist's newest issue is called Editor's Choice, and picks up a lot of articles that they couldn't place anywhere else but are too good not to publish. Of particular interest is the Deconstructing Collection editorial that discusses video game collecting:
Last March, an auction for a lot of 24 NES games appeared on myebid.com. A man who lost his son in Iraq a few years earlier and was only just beginning to sort through his possessions placed the items. Before long, the bidding price jumped above $10,000, because the man had unwittingly stumbled onto a goldmine: a gold Nintendo World Championships 1990 cartridge. The auction topped out at $21,400, and it's safe to say that the winning bidder wasn't shelling out that kind of cash for copies of MTV's Remote Control and The Hunt for Red October.

The Championships cartridge is rare piled upon rare. Only 116 were ever produced, and of that set only 26 were Zelda gold, manufactured for winners of a contest in Nintendo Power not long after the championships were held. The Championships carts are collection capstones; $21,000 seems a small price to pay for such an artifact.