A cartridge of Nintendo’s classic video game “Super Mario 64” set a world record Sunday, selling at auction for $1.56 million.
The sale, the first-ever of a game cartridge to surpass $1 million, came just two days after a sealed copy of “The Legend of Zelda” – made for the old Nintendo NES console – sold for a then-record of $870,000.
Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, which handled both sales, has not identified the buyers. Before Friday, the record for a video game auction was the sale in April of a 1986 “Super Mario Bros” cartridge: it went for $660,000.
Retro video games have become increasingly popular among nostalgic collectors in recent years, driving up prices for old-school consoles and cartridges at auctions.
The past year has seen record prices for video games and Pokémon cards, and the digital collectibles known as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens).
