There are a lot of video games that collectors would like to get their hands on, but few are as sought after as Stadium Events.

Developed by Bandai and released on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1987, there's not too much special about Stadium Events as a game. What makes it desirable to collectors is that it's among the most rare retail games in existence, with only an estimated 200 copies ever making their way to the hands of consumers.

In recent years, complete copies of Stadium Events (including the box and manual) have sold for $35,100 and $41,300, though the price is significantly lower for just the cartridge alone.

As it happens, one of those cartridges made its way through Denton over the weekend.

Alec Featherstone is the owner of Freaks and Geeks, a shop in Denton that sells video games, comic books, vintage toys and other geeky stuff. He got a phone call shortly after his store opened over the weekend asking if he could oversee a high value game transaction.

"I got a call from a local collector, and he had found someone in the Texas area that he was going to buy a couple of very rare games from," Featherstone says. "Because I buy, sell and trade this stuff all the time, he asked for my help in verifying that the pieces were legitimate; that they weren't bootlegs or swapped boards into real cartridges."

The seller in this case made a several-hours-long drive from Gilmer to Denton just to make the deal.

Getting Featherstone's help was a smart move for the buyer. Featherstone says that in the current market, his store would value Stadium Events at $7,500 to $9,000, depending on its condition. That's a bit more expensive than running up to another game retailer and buying a used copy of Madden.

Freaks and Geeks wasn't there to buy or sell the game, though. They just played host to the deal and made sure it was all on the up and up, which Featherstone accomplished in this case by actually taking apart the game cartridge itself.

"Primarily you want to open [the cartridge] up," he says. "That's going to be the dead giveaway for telling if it's fake or not. There are many databases online where people have been very, very fervent and very, very thorough with cataloging the chip numbers on the boards and the board number itself, and those numbers need to match for you to know the game is correct."

The database Featherstone most highly recommends is NintendoAge. Its users primarily collect and archive Nintendo products, like NES games.

When asked if Featherstone would say Stadium Events was the most rare item to come through his shop, he said, "I definitely would, but I would also like to preface that rare and valuable are not always hand-in-hand."

Video games (especially retro games) are obviously a big draw at Freaks and Geeks, but Featherstone is currently very interested in a different type of product he sells.

"Some of our favorite things currently, with the big success of comic book movies, have been selling older issues of comics," he says. "Stuff from before the movies were even conceived. People trying to get into the backstories of where these characters actually came from rather than relying on movies to tell them the backstories has been really interesting."

You can find Freaks & Geeks at 1629 N Elm St. in Denton, or visit them on Facebook.