An incredibly rare Foxdata Chrome Leopard Nintendo 64 (N64) controller is set to sell for as much as $1,200 at auction after being found in a gamer's loft.
The lot will go up for sale at Hansons Auctions on October 17, when it's expected to bring in between £700 and £1,000 (around $850 to $1,215). The controller is thought to be one of around 200 of its kind in existence.
Foxdata released a series of colourful N64 controllers in the late 1990s, only in the UK, that include the Chrome Leopard alongside Desert Storm, Red Rain, and Purple Forest (the full collection can be seen below thanks to Reddit user GamerAhmer). Experts believe Foxdata only produced around 800 controllers in total across the four designs.
Liam Clousdale was gifted the controller for his birthday in 1998 after seeing advertisements for the range in Nintendo magazines.
"All my friends used to go to each other’s houses to play and, to avoid confusion, everyone liked to have their own unique pad," Clousdale said. "The Foxdata ones were amazing to me at the time as they were official pads but with custom paint jobs. I used it a fair amount and loved having the craziest looking pad.
"One of my friends spotted that a Foxdata pad had sold for a decent amount of money and remembered I had one. He asked me about it so I unpackaged my old pad from a box in the loft where it had been carefully stored away," he continued. "I was very surprised by how much it was potentially worth. I’m happy to pass it on to a proper retro collector."
As Clousdale used the controller regularly as a child it's not boxed or in mint condition, but Hansons said this only adds to its charm and the sheer rarity of the item will draw eyes. "The Nintendo video game franchise is one that’s grown ever stronger with each console that has been released on to the market," said head of Hansons’ Toys and Video Games Auction David Wilson-Turner.
"Whilst the current trend is the Nintendo Switch, anything to do with Nintendo, whether it be modern or retro, is gaining more traction in the wider video game market. This controller offers a chance for a Nintendo memorabilia collector to source a rare, hard-to-find item. Though the controller has been used and is in need of slight attention, it only adds to its charm."
Video game auctions, and perhaps Nintendo merchandise in particular, are only growing more popular. A sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. on NES sold for a record-breaking $660,000 in 2021, but this was quickly broken by a sealed copy of fellow NES game The Legend of Zelda at $870,000.
Blowing both of these out of the water, a sealed copy of Super Mario 64 sold for an eye-watering $1,560,000 soon after.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
