Pokemon Gold and Silver Still Reward Careful Collectors

Pop the back off a Game Boy Color copy of Pokemon Gold and you'll find the thing that decides whether the cartridge is worth buying: a CR2025 battery soldered to the board, quietly dying since 2000. That battery didn't just hold your save. It ran the internal clock that made Bellsprout appear in the morning and Hoothoot at night. When it goes, the game still plays, but a chunk of what made these carts special goes with it.

Why the 1999 sequel still outclasses the original

Gold and Silver landed in Japan in late 1999 and reached PAL territories in 2001, running on the same Game Boy Color hardware that had launched Pokemon into a global habit two years earlier. Game Freak did something ambitious with limited ROM space: two full regions. You beat Johto, then boarded a train to Kanto and replayed the gyms from Red and Blue, right up to a fight with Red himself on Mt. Silver.

The day/night system, the 100 new species, the introduction of breeding and held items, the shiny mechanic that turned a red Gyarados into a story beat rather than a rumour. This is the entry that set the template every later generation copied. That's why boxed copies keep their pull with collectors who grew up on them and now have disposable income.

The variants worth knowing before you pay

Sorting the versions matters more here than with most Game Boy titles, because the regional and re-release differences move the price.

• PAL Gold and Silver - the versions most European collectors want, with the distinctive foil-fronted cardboard boxes that crush and scuff easily.
• NTSC (North American) releases, similar in scarcity but with different box art ratios and rating logos.
• Japanese carts - cheaper loose, and the Japanese Crystal shipped with a Mobile Game Boy Adapter tie-in that never left Japan.
• Pokemon Crystal (2001 PAL) - the enhanced third version with animated sprites and the Battle Tower. It sold in smaller numbers than Gold and Silver, so complete boxed Crystal commands a real premium over its siblings.

Loose carts are common and cheap. The money sits in CIB copies with the box, the fold-out poster-style manual and the inner tray intact, and it climbs steeply for anything sealed or PSA/WATA graded.

The condition traps that catch buyers out

The battery is the big one. A dead battery means no real-time clock, so time-based events stop and older saves can be lost. It's a fixable job for anyone comfortable with a soldering iron and a tabbed CR2025, but it's a bargaining point, not a footnote. Ask the seller whether the game keeps time, not just whether it saves.

Then there's the counterfeit problem, which is worse for Gen 2 than almost any other Game Boy line. Reproduction Gold, Silver and Crystal carts flood the market. Tells to check:

• The label print - genuine labels have crisp registration and a slightly textured finish; repros often look glossy or slightly blurry.
• Board photos - ask to see the PCB. A genuine Nintendo board has proper solder work and a real Sharp or Nintendo-marked save chip.
• The Nintendo seal moulded into the plastic shell, and the correct triangular security bit screw on the back.
• Weight and shell colour - Gold carts are a translucent gold-tinted plastic, Silver a translucent grey. Solid black shells are a red flag.

On boxed copies, watch for the foil lifting at the box corners and price stickers that tear the card when removed. Manuals warp if they've been stored damp, and the fold-out artwork is easy to crease. A box that looks clean in a thumbnail can arrive with a soft, shelf-worn spine, so always ask for photos of all six sides.

Where the market sits and where to look

Loose authentic carts remain one of the more affordable ways into serious Pokemon collecting. Sealed and graded copies have followed the same steep upward trend as the rest of the WATA-era Nintendo market, which means authentication is worth paying for once you're past pocket-money prices. If you want a graded copy, buy the grade from a reputable slab, not a seller's word.

For PAL cartridges and boxed sets, it's worth watching the Danish retro specialists on Golisto - sellers like DKretro.dk and DSKongen.dk both move Game Boy stock, and buying from a named partner beats gambling on an anonymous listing with one blurry photo.

My honest take: skip the sealed hype and hunt a clean CIB Crystal with a battery that still ticks. It's the best-playing version, it's scarcer than Gold or Silver, and a working clock is the closest thing you'll get to playing it the way 2001 intended. What's the state of the battery in your copy - still keeping time, or long dead?