Wow, that's ridiculous. Must be a rigged auction or some people are downright stupid.
Downright stupidity seems to be the mantra of video game collecting, like with what happened to comics back in the 90s. This isn't isolated to the Turbografx. Rare games across the board are going for obscene money.
For example,
Stadium Events is the rarest licensed-by-nintendo cart. It was put on a limited number of store shelves, and pulled about a month later, so Nintendo could re-brand it as
World Class Track Meet, a $2 game You might know it as the game that came with the power pad, and was the third game to be added to the Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt cart. Now, what is really surprising, is the two games are
identical once you pass the title screen. Someone paid $3,604 extra for a title screen and a different cart label.
Think that is bad?
One of the rarest Atari games has been found complete-in-box, for the first time ever.
Here is the story/auction. Its at $17,000+, and it wouldn't surprise me if it ended over $40,000. (The last one, before people even KNEW instructions existed, went for $31,000.)
Am I saying this in anyway justifies someone spending $1,300 on a game that has had 5 copies on ebay in the past couple weeks? Hell no. Hell, even if it were 1 copy, it still doesn't justify the price. However, putting things in perspective, things can get
far more ridiculous.... and probably will.