Original unopened Super Mario 64 cartridge sells for $1.5 million at Heritage Auctions in Dallas
(gamingheartscollection.net)
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Right these can't be that rare, surely. They millions of these.
Yep. You can buy the thing sealed in mint condition on eBay for less than 5000$ and it's not particularly rare.
So either: A) Some rich dude has decided a fancy box protector is worth over one million dollars.
B) This is Money Laundering
C) This is WATA and Heritage Auctions shifting items between themselves in an attempt to drive Interest, prestige and Prices for their goofy rating system.
Which makes a little bit of sense to why it would make the mainstream news everywhere. It certainly gets attention in that "look how much people are paying for a First Edition original series Charizard!" sort of way.
I absolutely know mom looked at me and had that thought at the dinner table and wanted to say "YOU have a copy of Mario 64, you could be rich!" without any understanding of the conditions that would need to align for anyone to so much as think of valuing it that high at auction.
So it definitely strikes as understandably odd to a culture that has seen beta carts and trade show demos get passed around for sums less than that, along with a thousand other titles that could be sought after by collectors but wouldn't make the news and reach the ears of normies in the same way Mario does.
Huh good point with C. Something I wouldn't have considered.
I think it's A. Because it's been "professionally graded", it supposedly is more valuable.
I'm pretty convinced it's C. But I really don't have any evidence...
I thought maybe it's some ultra rare version, like an original japanese release only made for some event or something.
But apparently it's just the run-of-the-mill US release as far as I can tell: https://www.ha.com/heritage-auctions-press-releases-and-news/first-3d-mario-game-jumps-in-to-heritage-video-games-auction.s?releaseId=4237