You could be dominating Mario Kart on the custom golden Wii made for Queen Elizabeth II – all for the very reasonable price of $300,000.
If you’re struggling to get your hands on a PS5 despite having the cash to spare, but you’re still in the market for a console fit for a queen, it seems you might have better luck heading to eBay and checking out the golden Wii (currently going for a cheeky $300,000 USD).
You’ll have to accept that you’re not the intended owner though, because this Wii was made for none other than Queen Elizabeth II.
Unfortunately, this does not mean that our favourite gamer girl Queen Lizzie has placed her gloved hands upon the console’s 24-karat gold-plated surface, nor does she intend to. In 2009, video game publisher THQ tried to send the one-of-a-kind golden Wii (which does, in fact, function) to the Queen, but it seems that the gift was rejected.
The console was sent as a publicity stunt for Big Family Games, an exclusive Wii title made up of family-friendly mini-games that not a single person remembers despite their evidently large PR budget.
After a British tabloid article stated that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II enjoyed playing Wii Sports bowling, THQ apparently thought she was the perfect addition to their list of influencers, deciding to send the family party game (alongside the absurdly expensive console) to the most prestigious family in Britain.
All hail the golden Wii pic.twitter.com/diBHOEBOLt
— Zelda Gif World (@GifZelda) April 28, 2021
With good old Liz never taking possession of the console, it drifted through various owners until 2017, when it ended up in the distinctly non-gloved hands of Donny Fillerup, a Dutch collector who co-founded a whole website about rare console variations. Fillerup says the reason why he’s selling his holy grail console is simple: “moving on with life”.
The collector has decided it’s time to relax and find a place of his own, which he’s never had before despite somehow owning a $300,000 Wii. He’s apparently never wanted to sell it before (in case he ever opened his own museum, of course), although he describes his family as being “never very healthy financially, so money was always needed”.
The decision to finally sell the notorious golden Wii has supposedly arisen from a desire to move forward in life, forcing Fillerup to let go of the things he’s attached to, including various other items in his collection. While he believes the console could be worth up to $1 million, the eBay listing has been set at $300,000 US to give more people the chance to buy it while still covering his house-hunting needs.
It’s a pretty hefty price tag for a second-hand console, which Fillerup reckons was actually used at one point due to some wear on the bottom of the matching golden Wii-mote.
Casually playing the forever iconic Wii Sports on the golden Wii made for the Queen would be a pretty impressive flex though… so maybe it is worth considering.
