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.
But that didn't happen. Instead, the box ended up sitting in the garage of the grandson of the salvage company owner for "for over 20 years." Kevin Braun, the owner of a small retro shop near Milwaukee, Wisconsin called OneStopWonders, bought the box of cartridges with the intent to "sell each game for roughly $10 to $15 apiece."
If you're like me, a lifelong gamer hovering somewhere in the 35- to 45-year-old range, you'll likely remember the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo cartridges as being absolutely ubiquitous. They were packed in with many NES consoles, and the used market was absolutely awash with them. Even as the collector's market has dramatically inflated the value of other retro classics, Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridges are still inexpensive and plentiful.
Pretty crazy stuff if you haven't seen it - a game store owner had a box of Super Mario/Duck Hunt carts that turned out to be - brand new - manufactured in 1993 (!) - an extremely late variant unknown to collectors nintendowire.com/news/2026/07...
— @kohler.bsky.social (@kohler.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-31T15:55:36.985Z
So when Ganos, who worked with Braun to sell various games online, discovered this box sitting in the retro store owner's storage unit, he was primarily shocked because of the games' condition, not their rarity. These were effectively new carts, neatly wrapped up with crisp manuals alongside them. "Seeing brand-new Nintendo games is an incredibly exciting thing for a game collector," Ganos explains. "But seeing 97 of them all lined up, all of them pristine, nearly knocked me straight on my ass."
Ganos didn't realize the true value of his discovery until he started sharing photos of the games with members of a high-end collecting group. "What I had found wasn't just a box of pristine Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridges. It was an undocumented, never before seen variant. The back label was unlike anything that had been documented before. Instead of the standard English-only text, it featured multiple languages. The manufacturing codes on both the cartridge and instruction manual also differed, indicating these games were produced in late 1993," Ganos says.
"Even the manual contained previously undocumented text. Known manuals include the phrase 'maintenance or repairs,' while this newly discovered version instead reads 'maintenance or service.' Perhaps most puzzling of all, the manufacturing dates on both the cartridge and manual come after every known Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt bundle these games could have belonged to."
The conclusion? "What we had found was the very last production run, and an undiscovered variant of Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt." Ganos soon personally flew the 97 cartridges out to be graded by PSA, which encased the carts in plastic with some being graded as a perfect 10.
We've seen rare, graded Super Mario Bros. carts sell for millions of dollars in the past, but exactly how much collectors will be willing to pay for these remains to be seen. Ganos and Braun intend to split the carts, "keeping an undecided number for ourselves. Some of the others will be auctioned off, and others will have charity auctions set up in the very near future." More specifically, the first three auctions will occur on August 12, so we'll know the true value of these games soon enough.
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