Super Mario 64 Cartridge Sells At Auction For Record-Breaking $1.5 Million

On Friday, it was announced that a new game cartridge auction record had been set with the sale of The Legend of Zelda for NES at $870,000. Now, only two days later, that record has already been broken with another high-figure auction, this one involving an unopened copy of Super Mario 64 sold earlier today.

The auction was conducted by Heritage Auctions, which reports that the unopened copy of Super Mario for the Nintendo 64 sold for a massive $1,560,000. That is around double the amount of the previous record held by The Legend of Zelda auction that ended this past Friday.

The sealed cartridge sold at auction was a 1996 USA version of Super Mario 64 graded at A++ quality. "The condition of this copy is just so breathtaking that we're really at a loss here," the auction house said in its description of the product. Though copies of this game aren't particularly rare, it is highly unusual to find a pristine version that has never been opened.

Super Mario 64 is a notable game for many reasons; not only was it the defining title of many millennials' childhoods, it was also the top selling title offered on the iconic Nintendo 64 console and the first time fans got to experience the character Mario in a 3D environment. It's perhaps no surprise, then, that someone was willing to pay a huge figure for an incredibly rare piece of video game history.

Despite that, the sales figure was still considerably higher than similar past items we've seen. It appears that the value of high-quality retro game cartridges has skyrocketed over the past couple of years, at least when it comes to the collection market. If you have an unsealed, unblemished classic game still sitting in a box somewhere, now may be the time to dust it off and see what it's worth.