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Mario

Heritage sets consecutive video game auction records within 48-hour stretch

Sheila Gibson Stoodley
Sheila Gibson Stoodley
A 9.8 grade sealed copy of Super Mario 64 sold for $1.56 million and a new world auction record for a video game, two days after a different lot in the same sale broke that record.
A 9.8 grade sealed copy of ‘Super Mario 64’ sold for $1.56 million and a new world auction record for a video game, two days after a different lot in the same sale broke that record.

DALLAS – On July 11, Heritage Auctions sold a 1996 copy of the beloved Nintendo video game Super Mario 64 for $1.56 million – a new world auction record for any video game cartridge.

The sealed game, which had earned a 9.8 grade on the Wata scale, became the first to cross the million-dollar threshold at auction. In doing so, it broke the world auction record, which had been set just two days earlier, on July 9, by a 9.0-Wata grade sealed 1987 copy of The Legend of Zelda that garnered $870,000.

Both lots were part of the Video Games Signature Auction held from July 9-11. It was Heritage’s first dedicated sale of video games and grossed more than $8.4 million.

The record that Heritage shattered twice within the same auction was held by a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. with a Wata grade of 9.6 that sold for $660,000 in April. Prior to the April result, the world auction record for a video game cartridge was won by a copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 that garnered $156,000 in November 2020. And before that, in July 2020, the record was captured by a Super Mario Bros. cartridge that realized $114,000.

All five results took place at Heritage Auctions. The house also presided over the sales that witnessed the video game cartridge category cross the six-figure threshold and the seven-figure threshold within the space of a year, almost precisely.

The front cover of a 9.0 grade sealed copy of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda, which sold for $870,000 on July 9.
The front cover of a 9.0 grade sealed copy of Nintendo’s ‘The Legend of Zelda,’ which sold for $870,000 and a new world auction record on July 9. That record lasted roughly two days.

“After the record-breaking sale of the first game in the Zelda series on Friday, the possibility of surpassing $1 million on a single video game seemed like a goal that would need to wait for another auction,” Heritage Auctions Video Games Specialist Valarie McLeckie said in a post-sale statement released by the auction house. “We were shocked to see that it turned out to be in the same one! We are proud to have been a part of this historic event, and look forward to being on the forefront of the video game hobby and serving such a dedicated collector community in the years to come.”

Super Mario 64 was the first 3-D video game to feature Nintendo’s Mario character. It is also the best-selling game on the Nintendo 64 platform.

Heritage will hold its next Video Games Signature Auction on October 29-30.

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