Most people would give anything to have some memorabilia from space. To have an astronaut’s helmet, to have a rock from the moon, why even to have a pen that has been to space would be pretty cool. That is why a recent auction caused some excitement when a Russian cosmonaut placed a very special item up for auction. Aleksandr A. Serebrov decided to auction off the Nintendo Gameboy that he played in 1993 while orbiting the Earth.
The Gameboy at first appears like any other. It is white and comes with one game included as well as the original booklet. In most auctions, it would fetch very little but this Gameboy is different. This Gameboy happens to have orbited the Earth 3,000 times and spent almost 200 days in space.
The device was sold for US$1,220 and was part of a wider auction called The Space History Sale. There were many notable items for sale including a spacesuit glove that sold for over $6,000.
The Gameboy had been used on a mission to the Mir space station and Serebrov said that while he had little time to play it, whenever he did it brought him much joy. Serebrov was the first Russian to a rocket-backpack in open space. It is understandable why he didn’t have time for the Gameboy when those were his other pastimes.
The fact that he brought Tetris with him is noteworthy as well. The game that was originally invented in Russia, being brought on a Russian space mission, captures the advances in ingenuity that the Russian nation has made. The interest in the item shows that space still captures the hearts and minds of everyone. It would be amazing to see a rejuvenated interest in space travel taking place in the future, who knows what amazing things continue to go undiscovered.
