Your Old Copy of Super Mario 64 Might Be Worth $1M

published Jul 13, 2021
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If you are an ’80s or ’90s kid, you remember bopping bricks in the one-dimensional world of Super Mario Brothers. While the video games starring your favorite mustached character have evolved over the last few decades, the nostalgia of early Nintendo is still very much alive. The proof: an old copy of Super Mario 64 recently fetched over $1.5 million.

Per The Associated Press, Heritage Auctions in Dallas recently sold an unopened copy of Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 at auction for $1.56 million. The 1996 game — which was the best-selling game for the console and the first to feature Mario in 3D — broke the Heritage Auctions’ previous video game selling record of $870,000 for Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda, which sold just a week ago. This might be an indicator that vintage games are hot right now, and it might be the best time to sell your own for maximum profit.

Before these two record-breaking numbers, the highest sale belonged to an unopened copy of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. — which first came out in 1986 — that had been forgotten in a desk drawer for decades. The copy sold for $660,000 in April of this year, so again, the time to sell might be now. Vintage consoles, brand new in box, are also selling for big bucks, fetching in the thousands on Ebay.

But here’s the deal: If you have to blow on your game or system in order to get it to work (’90s kids know what we are talking about), you probably aren’t going to become a millionaire overnight. The games and consoles raking in the thousands are either brand new or are in mint condition, making them the ultimate collectors items. For example, this brand new copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 is currently selling for nearly $3,000 on Ebay, while another listing in “Good” condition is listed at $24.  

Fortunately, if you can’t trade in your old video games for a new car, you can still use them as a time machine to take you back a few decades. And that is priceless.