L@@K RARE

It all started when a certain "mad_hawaiian" claimed to have multiple game carts signed by a certain gaming guru genius by the name of Shigeru Miyamoto. Upon reading these featured auctions, thanks to a link from NESWorld's messageboard, I knew that a scheme was a-brewin'.

The seller of this "priceless but priced" auction set the 'buy now' price to $1k and started it off with a cool first bid of $200. Pretty smooth, M_H, pretty damn smooth. And he even managed enough to put his grubby hands inside of his proverbial "sack of goods" and scooped out a second "autographed" cart, one of the Japanese version of Super Mario Kart 64. An unsuspecting bidder won the N64 game for $199.

I was enlightened by such a wonderous marvel of a scam. What if-- What if-- *I* signed a Nintendo cartridge, too, and stuck the words "RARE" and "L@@K" into the auction's title for all to see. Would people give in? Would they even know who I was? Or, yet, would they bid on it anyway because L@@K it's a RARE AUTOGRAPH? The answer to all those questions is easy: Yes, yes, and yes.

I came upon my duplicate copy of Super Mario 3 and wrote the first influenitial thing I could think of, which happened to be a lyric of Fleetwood Mac. It captured the stupidity, humor, and utter fenius (fake genius) of such a daring prank. The following was the auction's item description:

This is beyond rare, even in eBay's standards. I am a offering a once in a lifetime autograph Super Mario Bros. 3 cart signed by webmaster of the very popular NES website NESplayer.com! Don't ask me how I got this autograph, but I have it! And I'm willing to pass it along to a special someone for the right price! The signature reads: "Don't stop thinking 'bout tomorrow!" and signed below. Wow!

Remember this is an extrememly rare autograph and probably will not be seen up on ANY auction site again.

Bid with confidence!

I alerted fellow NES gamer, Jackalneo, of the auction and he immediately posted it on NESWorld. I posted a link on Flying Omlette's. Close to everyone was amused by the prank except for "mean, mad dog Martin". (Read responses from FO's.) (Read responses from NESWorld.)

FOOLS! ALL FOOLS!

As you can see, it looked like there were some people who really wanted it, but the highest bid Jackal made was for $10, and he won it at $9.50.

VIEW THE COMPLETE EBAY AUCTION