A copy of Super Mario 64 is now the most expensive game ever after selling for $1.5 million

On Friday, when I wrote about how a sealed copy of The Legend of Zelda for the NES sold for an eye-popping $870,000 at auction and set a new record for the most expensive video game ever sold, I wondered which game would be the first to sell for more than a million. Just two days later, I have my answer: a sealed copy of the Nintendo 64 classic Super Mario 64 sold for an astonishing $1,560,000 at Heritage Auctions on Sunday, smashing the record that had just been claimed by The Legend of Zelda.

Over the past 12 months, the record for the most expensive video game ever has risen dramatically. Here’s the timeline of the record, as far as I am aware:

• July 10th, 2020: copy of Super Mario Bros. sells for $114,000
• November 23rd, 2020: copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 sells for $156,000
• April 2nd, 2021: copy of Super Mario Bros. sells for $660,000
• July 9th, 2021: copy of The Legend of Zelda sells for $870,000
• July 11th, 2021: copy of Super Mario 64 sells for $1,560,000

It’s not just video games that have skyrocketed. The value of Pokémon cards has been on a tear, too, and eBay even announced a feature for its app to make it easier to scan trading cards to sell on the auction site. The prices of NFTs, a form of digital collectibles, seems to be dropping, though.