A game cartridge from last week The legend of Zelda sold for $ 870,000, the highest price ever paid for a video game at auction. But The legend of Zelda only held that record for a few days before figuratively stepping into second place. A sealed copy of the over the weekend Super mario 64 sold for $ 1.56 million at cultural auctions.
That moment has been drawing near for some time as video games and other nostalgic media outlets have grown in popularity and mainstream appeal (and most importantly, price) in recent years. But the video game preservation experts and history were surprised to see this Super Mario 64 break that record despite the pristine quality of the copy. Super Mario 64 is not a particularly rare game; Nintendo has sold millions of copies since its release in 1996.
But most of these copies of Super mario 64 don’t have a 9.8 wata rating – a score from the video game reviews firm that means the quality is near-perfect in both production and preservation. Seller Heritage Auctions named the sealed copy of Super mario 64 the “Highly rated copy” of the game it ever sold.
Wata is a review service that specializes in retro video games. People submit their video games for review and certification. Rating is important for these big ticket games so buyers can be sure they are getting something of value.
Wata’s scale goes to 10 and 9.8 is a very high score. Video games with the grade 10 are extremely Rarely, Ryan Sabga, CEO of Wata, told Polygon – only a “small handful” of games got the grade. (Sabga declined to say exactly how many.) For a game to get a 10, it must be kept in “pristine” condition but also perfectly manufactured, “which is a 9.8A ++ to the highest reasonably attainable grade for a sealed play makes “. he said.
Sabga said Wata received “case-packs” of Nintendo 64 games – straight from the factory and destined for retail – that have never been in circulation or opened. “Even in these non-distributed ‘case-fresh’ copies, the results usually end in two or less 9.8 seconds and often without,” said Sabga.
Video game conservator Chris Kohler told Polygon that it’s rare to find a copy like this, even for one of the most popular Nintendo 64 games. “There’s a bit of a gold rush right now where people are trying to buy the nicest copies of things they can and money didn’t matter for some reason,” Kohler said.
A copy of Super mario 64, rated 9.4 A +, sold at Heritage Auctions in January for $ 38,400. Many others, with lower grades from Wata, were also sold last year – between hundreds and thousands of dollars on sites like Heritage Auctions and elsewhere. But the price jump to well over $ 1 million this weekend shocked some video game history and conservation experts. Kohler told Polygon he didn’t think this would be the game to crack a million dollars. Others, like the founder of the Video Game History Foundation, Frank Cifaldi, were initially skeptical because of the sudden jump in value.
“The jump in price for this stuff is so sudden and so specific for items that I don’t think it happened naturally.” Cifaldi tweeted on Sunday. “It all feels really suspicious, imo.”
Video Game History Foundation co-director and video game retailer Kelsey Lewin expressed a similar opinion. “Two really suspicious things about it: Despite the lack of population reports, many are known to be sealed Super mario 64 first prints “, Lewin tweeted. “Auctions for other speculative items actually went relatively * low * this week, with a matte Mario sticker selling for just $ 3,600.”
Like Pokémon, which is also booming in the value of its trading cards, Nintendo games are like Super mario 64 represent a period of time for which people have become nostalgic.
“These are things whose value will increase in the next 10, 20, 30 years,” said Kohler. “This is not a bubble that will burst tomorrow.”
While the prices are offbeat, they’re not necessarily anomalies. Comic books and trading cards have seen a similar boom recently, and the value of video games has grown rapidly over the past year.
In 2020 a sealed copy of Super mario bros., rated 9.4 by Wata, sold for $ 114.00, a record at the time. A year later a rare copy of Super mario bros., rated 9.6 by Wata, sold for $ 660.00 – more than five times its 2020 price.
The jump in price on this stuff is so sudden and on such specific items that I don’t think it happened naturally. It all feels really suspicious imo. https://t.co/0MAhaWYF1H
– Frank Cifaldi (not licensed) .nes (@frankcifaldi) July 11, 2021
“We have seen a steady rise in the price of games that we authenticate and rate for some time,” said Sabga. “This is not new or sudden to us.”
The value is, of course, directly tied to the price someone will pay for something – and obviously someone really wanted that near-pristine copy of Super mario 64. Several bidders took part in the auction to drive the price skyrocketing.
That kind of rapid surge isn’t necessarily good or bad for video game keepers, Kohler said. Super mario 64 has been preserved; There are many copies of it, and on top of that someone leaked the source code.
“I don’t think this sale for what it was sold for is going to have as much of an impact on actual conservation,” Kohler said. It would be a problem to see prices like this for unreleased games and prototypes – things trapped on a single ROM cartridge, he said.
Cifaldi Added in a tweet on MondayIn response to concerns that high prices for retro games could compromise their preservation, the Video Game History Foundation focuses primarily on “information and context” with little emphasis on “archiving an untouched copy of a popular game.” He found that Wata, in turn, was also beneficial to the heritage scene: Cifaldi said that the Video Game History Foundation has been tasked with Wata to archive prototype game data that has passed through the rating system. He said that “every prototype” submitted to Wata since September has been archived by the foundation.
