$50k worth of retro Nintendo NES games stolen in devastating home robbery — crooks took 850 games spanning 40 years from family
A family from Pierce County in Washington, Seattle, claims that thieves broke into their home and stole a haul of retro Nintendo hardware worth more than $50,000. Amongst other items taken, Fox13 reports the perps made off with more than 850 NES games, collected by the family over the span of some forty years.
According to the report, the thieves simply forced entry to the home by breaking in through the front door. The stricken family told the outlet that it appeared the thieves knew the layout of their home, targeting the master bathroom and making off with a tennis bracelet, amongst other things.
“They’ve been in our home. They know our home layout. They’ve been in our master bathroom. They took my wife’s tennis bracelet,” Roger Holler said. The prize haul, however, seems to have been the aforementioned bundle of retro video games.
Holler told the outlet he had begun collecting Nintendo games from 1984, and had spent some 30 years “driving around on the weekends from game store to game store.” Holler’s son reportedly said the father and son duo would spend up to 10 hours on car journeys, collecting and cleaning the cartridges.
All in all, the collection amounted to 850 NES games, some of which are said to have been worth a small fortune. An image from the report shows five games that appear to be from the collection, likely not worth more than $25 a piece as loose cartridges. They are:
- The Legend of Kage (1987)
- Ice Climber (1985)
- Raid on Bungeling Bay (1987)
- Rygar (1987)
- Donkey Kong 3 (1986)
Depending on the condition and the game, NES titles can indeed fetch astonishing amounts of cash in today’s retro market. One lucky scavenger recently discovered a collection of 97 untouched Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. cartridges, thought to be worth $10,000 each. In 2024, an ultra-rare NES Gold Nintendo World Championships cartridge sold for $207,400.
Given the stated value of the stolen collection, Holler told the outlet that it “was going to be my grandkids’ inheritance or college tuition.” Beyond the financial value, Holler lamented the loss of decades of family history.
