Today I discovered that I own a previously unknown GBA NFR variant.

[Grondorr | 49]

Metroid Zero Mission is no longer the only GBA NFR that has two versions that are only distinguished by whether NOT FOR RESALE is printed on the front label.

Pokemon Sapphire now joins that club. Makes you wonder what else is out there. I suspect that a low number of these remain as paranoid gamers and sneaky GameStop employees probably just peeled off the back stickers, which would make them indistinguishable from retail carts. Which is probably what they were to begin with. My best theory is that these were quickly assembled when Nintendo ran out of "proper"  NFR carts to send to Video Game shops. (The back stickers contain the same information.)

Edited September 6, 2021 by Grondorr

[phart010 | 1,705]

Who is to say that someone didn’t just take the rear shell off a proper NFR and swap it over to a regular version of the game?

[Grondorr | 49]

Literally nothing. But ...

1) I know who I bought it from in 2019 (a known long time collector from NA) and I just asked where they got it and it was from a Nintendo rep years ago.

2) The Sapphire NFR has been pretty hard to come by for years, so it wouldn't make sense to desecrate one. (There is no sales data in eBay or pricecharting for example). Certainly there wouldn't be a financial reason to do it as most people would be very suspicious, and it would be much easier to sell with the proper front.

BTW I'm a little mad at myself that it took me this long to notice, but I recently completed the set after many years and was going through my entire GBA NFR collection and carefully documenting the condition of each cart when I noticed.

That said because the back stickers have the same serial number (unlike the Metroid variant) I'm not sure if this should be considered part of the standard NFR set or a bonus nice-to-have like the MEW and TRU distro carts.

Edited September 6, 2021 by Grondorr

[Grondorr | 49]

I am remembering that Super Mario Advance is another title that has a known second version that is basically just a retail cart with a backsticker, but it like Metroid Zero Mission has a different ID # on the back sticker. As far as I know this is the only NFR variant that has the same back sticker # for both variants. (Remember there are other known NFRs that are basically just retail carts with back stickers that didn't have a special manufacturing run with a distinct front label.)

Edited September 6, 2021 by Grondorr
Clarity

[coffeewithmrsaturn | 100]

This is awesome.  It's a big deal to find something in 2021 that has never been on nintendemos.  Congrats on a very special piece!

[Skorp | 383]

As Sapphire is one of the rarest GBA NFRS right now, you now even have a current one of a kind variant of it. Congrats and thanks for sharing! There are truly many out there. Like this year I've found another new DS back sticker only not for resale with a unique code and few years back I was able to get Pokemon Dash not for resale just out of nowhere that was never known to exist and seems like I'm the only person with it. There are definitely more out there that have yet to be discovered and probably in someone's hands right now and have no idea. It's a really enjoyable category to search and collect for.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

On 9/6/2021 at 4:22 AM, phart010 said:

Who is to say that someone didn’t just take the rear shell off a proper NFR and swap it over to a regular version of the game?

Explain to me why anyone would actually do that?

[phart010 | 1,705]

2 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Explain to me why anyone would actually do that?

I’m not saying that it isn’t legit. That said, there is no reason to explain someone’s motives for making a fake. (Although the motivation for most faking of rarities in this hobby is typically money)

I am merely pointing out the relative ease of taking the rear shell from a sticker backed NFR and putting it with the front shell of a regular version of the game. It is totally possible to do.

For things that are easily fake-able, usually you need more than just the item itself to authenticate it. For example, with autographed items, usually a photo of the signing or some other evidence needs to be present to authenticate the item.

Granted, that would not be possible with this item, because nobody was thinking about the collectibility of it back in the day. But now that everyone is collection-minded it’s always healthy to have a bit of cautious skepticism about things like this.

 

 

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

1 hour ago, phart010 said:

I’m not saying that it isn’t legit. That said, there is no reason to explain someone’s motives for making a fake. (Although the motivation for most faking of rarities in this hobby is typically money)

I am merely pointing out the relative ease of taking the rear shell from a sticker backed NFR and putting it with the front shell of a regular version of the game. It is totally possible to do.

For things that are easily fake-able, usually you need more than just the item itself to authenticate it. For example, with autographed items, usually a photo of the signing or some other evidence needs to be present to authenticate the item.

Granted, that would not be possible with this item, because nobody was thinking about the collectibility of it back in the day. But now that everyone is collection-minded it’s always healthy to have a bit of cautious skepticism about things like this.

 

 

The reason I wanna know why someone would do that is simple - you already have a legit one to be able to back swap it.  And since the OP is the only known copy that says NFR on the front, there wouldn't suddenly be two.  And since even that one has a sticker on the back, a back swap wouldn't cause you to have two...at best you have one NFR and one damaged NFR that would be of lesser value.  It's doable, sure, but it doesn't make sense to do it.

[phart010 | 1,705]

3 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

The reason I wanna know why someone would do that is simple - you already have a legit one to be able to back swap it.  And since the OP is the only known copy that says NFR on the front, there wouldn't suddenly be two.  And since even that one has a sticker on the back, a back swap wouldn't cause you to have two...at best you have one NFR and one damaged NFR that would be of lesser value.  It's doable, sure, but it doesn't make sense to do it.

Would it be a outside the realm of plausibility that there was an NFR discovered that had the front label totally destroyed or washed off. Someone knew enough about NFR to know it was special, but not enough about collecting to know that you should not piece together non-matching variants. So they just replaced the NFR front cover with a standard label front cover. 
 

Im not saying this is what happened, but it’s an entirely plausible scenario.