The first of these games is Battlefields of Napoleon, and it includes all of its original packaging design (see below). The second one, however, now this is where things get really interesting. This enigmatic and very plain looking cartridge is labelled “CES SAMPLE” and is a demo game specifically for the Power Glove. In addition to this, it comes from the brains at Donkey Kong Country developer Rare. These listings were initially spotted by Frank Cifaldi from the Video Game History Foundation (via Kotaku). Cifaldi stated he estimates the sale of these cartridges will easily reach into the “thousands”, and he is right. At the time of writing, Battlefields of Napoleon is sitting with a current bid of $5100. Cifaldi has said he’s now looking for funding to purchase these NES cartridges for the Video Game History Foundation - a nonprofit organisation dedicated to preserving, celebrating, and teaching the history of video games. However, Cifaldi also says the organisation isn’t currently, financially at least, in a position to do this. “It’s been kind of a rough year. We’re healthy and happy but not at a ‘continue throwing thousands at prototypes when they show up’ level,” he explained on Twitter. Cifaldi concluded by stating his DMs were open if anyone wanted to make a contribution to this cause. Other unexpected and rare video game related items seen to pop up on eBay over the years range from rare Pokémon cards to missing Game Awards trophies.
