It should come as no surprise that my 8-year-old is an avid collector of vintage Nintendo handhelds. His latest acquisition is an original Game Boy and a handful of games from a used game store. The Kid thought it was an absolute bargain for $15, but he's always on the lookout for interesting additions to his collection.

I dare not show him this one, which is expected to fetch $1500-$2000 at auction.

Lot No. 250 in Bonhams' upcoming Space History Sale is a spacefaring Game Boy that flew on Soyuz TM-17 in 1993. It logged 196 days in space in the possession of cosmonaut Aleksandr A. Serebrov. The lot includes the Game Boy unit, (highly appropriate) Tetris game pack and the Tetris game booklet. The unit and booklet are marked with faint Mir postmarks and accompanied by a handwritten provenance note from Serebrov that reads, "Like all cosmonauts, I love sport. My particular favorites are football and swimming. During flight, in rare minutes of leisure, I enjoyed playing Game Boy."



For his sanity's sake, I hope Tetris wasn't the only game Serebrov took on the journey.

Lot No. 250: NINTENDO GAME BOY FLOWN IN SPACE [via a comment by Mikiex on this post]