Three Million Dollars, Found Inside a Console Box

In June 2026, a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for $3 million at Heritage Auctions’ Video Games Signature Auction, according to the auction house’s own reporting in Intelligent Collector. The cartridge carried a PSA grade of 9.6 A++. Heritage’s own consignment director for video games said the copy’s backstory made it exceptional: “The remarkable backstory — it was just discovered a few months ago inside a brand-new Control Deck NES console bundle” that had apparently sat sealed and untouched for roughly 40 years.

The Zelda Sale That Set the Modern Record

Before the Mario sale, the record-holder was a sealed copy of The Legend of Zelda, which sold for $870,000 at Heritage Auctions on July 10, 2021, per Shacknews. That cartridge, which originally retailed for $49.99, ended up selling for more than 17,000 times its original sticker price.

It’s Not Just Cartridges Anymore

A factory-sealed 1986 NES Deluxe Set sold for $120,000 through Heritage Auctions, the highest price ever paid for a commercial video game console, according to market reporting picked up by Yahoo Finance. That coverage notes a sealed copy of Super Mario 64 has sold for $1.56 million, and graded, sealed items generally outperform ungraded counterparts by 40 to 50 percent in resale value.

Why a Grading Slab Is Worth So Much

The engine behind all of these numbers is third-party grading, done by services like WATA and PSA, which convert a decades-old collectible into a standardized, independently verified asset that can be bought and sold with real price transparency.

What This Means for an Attic Full of Old Games

None of this means every sealed game in a childhood closet is a lottery ticket, but the ceiling on this category has moved dramatically in just a few years, and it’s moved in one direction only: up. A sealed, untouched cartridge that a family assumed was worthless clutter could, in the right circumstances, be worth genuinely more than the car sitting in the driveway outside.