Gold Binary Land Cart a Fake?

[senseiman]

There has been a story circulating in the Japanese language Famicom blogosphere that the super-expensive gold Binary Land cart may be of questionable provenance.  I`ve summarized the story in English on my blog here:

http://famicomblog.blogspot.jp/2013/11/breaking-famicom-news-lost-love-and.html?showComment=1384307604750#c8627771173695006476

I thought it was kind of interesting.  I saw a copy of the game at Super Potato for almost $1,000  a couple of months ago.  Anybody have any thoughts?

[UglyJoe]

It's kinda sad that they didn't get married (if that's true!).  Makes for a great story...

[fcgamer]

It's kinda sad that they didn't get married (if that's true!).  Makes for a great story...

Yeah I feel a bit bummed out about that part too...

[80sFREAK]

So... we have 1) a game with easter egg; 2) love story(fake? or girl just wanted bigger diamond on the ring?); 3) very expensive cart made back in the days(?)

Small(how small it was?) quantity is not an issue and third part companies, who released limited runs, are known.

Someone trying to shake the market? Someone trying to drop/push the price? Or just someone having lulz?

[Ghegs]

That is interesting, I had never heard of the Gold version before.

One possibility is that there are both legit and fake versions in circulation. The Gold version is genuine and was made for somebody's wedding, then later when the technology to create fakes was more accessible some eager entrepreneur notices that the real thing goes for a lot of money and decides to start making fakes. He only sells them rarely and/or through proxies so the market doesn't get over saturated with them and nobody notices.

That doesn't quite explain the stickers, though. If somebody was making fakes of such expensive stuff, you'd think they paid better attention to details. I wonder how many carts the "investigators" had access to? If they just compared two carts, then there could be several explanations for that. But if they had, say, a dozen to check, then that would reveal a whole lot more.

[senseiman]

Yeah, it is kind of sad about them not getting married in the end

About the stickers, they actually are on the game box rather than on the carts.  Just looking around on Google image search I could find a couple of examples that illustrate the point. Here is one from a Yahoo Auction listing:

http://oroti.blog.jp/archives/67747253.html

And here is one that was for sale at Mandarake on their page:

http://www.mandarake.co.jp/information/2005/11/28/nnb02/

The stickers are similar in appearance (though one is white while the other is a bit yellow this might be from aging), but they are placed at noticably different angles.  Given that there were only 200 of these made to be distributed altogether at a formal ocassion you would have thought they would all be the same (especially in Japan where this sort of thing gets noticed).  

[80sFREAK]

That doesn't quite explain the stickers, though. If somebody was making fakes of such expensive stuff, you'd think they paid better attention to details. I wonder how many carts the "investigators" had access to? If they just compared two carts, then there could be several explanations for that. But if they had, say, a dozen to check, then that would reveal a whole lot more.

+1

[fami-ave]

Yeah, it is kind of sad about them not getting married in the end

About the stickers, they actually are on the game box rather than on the carts.  Just looking around on Google image search I could find a couple of examples that illustrate the point. Here is one from a Yahoo Auction listing:

http://oroti.blog.jp/archives/67747253.html

And here is one that was for sale at Mandarake on their page:

http://www.mandarake.co.jp/information/2005/11/28/nnb02/

The stickers are similar in appearance (though one is white while the other is a bit yellow this might be from aging), but they are placed at noticably different angles.  Given that there were only 200 of these made to be distributed altogether at a formal ocassion you would have thought they would all be the same (especially in Japan where this sort of thing gets noticed).  

I have now looked at a bunch of copies (5 different ones from old auctions) as well as the one that's currently on Yahoo Auctions, and I cannot seem to find any noticeable differences in size and style as mentioned on Famicomblog. Then again I'm at work and not really comparing pixels here... but it seems that the only difference is the location of the stickers, with all of them being on the left side.

This could have many explanations, for example that more than 1 person put on the stickers after the games arrived from the factory and they did not necessarily discuss the precise location other than "on the left side would be good" before they got started. I'd expect that a commercial bootlegger would reproduce the same location every time even moreso than employees who put stickers on a company gift, but I'm just spinning stories here... guess we may never know for sure.

[fcgamer]

Of all the prize carts, this one is one that is in my top want list.  Anyone here have one of these and want to trade it for a lot of nice stuff?

[BonBon]

I've seen ryo with a copy. Only one I've ever seen.