For console and country
Fancy a Golden Wii? Well you need to pony up at least $3,000 or more, depending on what people are willing to pay.
“The Golden Wii for Queen Elizabeth” is now up for auction. This system, which is allegedly adorned with 24 karat gold (alongside of a Wiimote to match) has quite a story attached to it. In one of the most insane promotions in gaming history, the queen of England was “given a golden Wii” by THQ to promote a shovelware minigame collection of all things (Big Family Games). Well, that’s the broad picture, at least. What a lot of those old-school headlines are missing is the reality.
After it was delivered in grand fashion to a checkpoint, it was denied entry and never actually made it into the palace. In other words, the queen never even saw it or touched it, and possibly wasn’t even aware of it. Here’s the full story from the listing:
“The Palace Correspondence Team’s understandably strict policy when it comes to gifts, however, for security reasons, the [Golden Wii] console never actually made it into the Palace, let alone into the Queen’s hands. It was subsequently sent back to the THQ offices, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, who assumed that it had reached its final destination, living the life of royalty.”
Like most gimmicks it kind of fell into disarray and was “forgotten,” until it was acquired by a “collector,” who sold it to another party, who is selling it now. If the queen actually used it in some fashion, it would clearly be going for a lot more cash. As it stands, console collectors can snatch it up for whereabouts of $3,000 at the time of writing.
If you want it, it’s up for auction until Saturday, May 21. For that price, I would totally go in with a bunch of people and agree to donate it to a museum.
