Video game collecting
[3] Various third-party assessors entered the market around this time to support the collectors in rating the condition of the game and packaging so that buyers and sellers could negotiate fair deals.
[4] Larger interest in this hobby grew during the 2010s, driven by collectors from other forms of media like comics and coin collecting that saw video games as a potential new venue for long-term investments, rather than as nostalgia.
[5] The copy of the game had been sealed with a sticker, representing one of the earlier runs of the title before Nintendo had switched over to shrink wrap packaging, thus contributing to its collector's value.
[5] A sale of 40 different NES games in various sealed quality went for a total of over US$1 million in October 2019, the largest single-sale of any video game-related auction to date.
[1] In July 2020, a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for US$114,000 (equivalent to $134,214 in 2023), becoming the highest sale of a single video game at the time.
The game also had a 9.4 near-mint condition on the Wata scale, but had come from a limited production run when Nintendo was transitioning from the sticker seal to shrink-wrap, as evidenced by the presence of a cardboard hang tab on the back.
[11] A shrink-wrapped, 9.6-rated version of Super Mario Bros., dating from the game's release during the 1986 launch of the NES in the United States, was auctioned for $660,000 (equivalent to $742,105 in 2023) in April 2021.
[14] These sales led to some concern that the market for near-mint vintage games may be grossly inflated, since sealed copies of the first printing Super Mario 64 were not considered as rare as previous record-breaking titles.
Video game historian Frank Cifaldi said "I 100% agree it being a 9.8 puts it at a completely different level but a sudden jump from $30k to $1.5M feels wrong.
[18] Wata Games was acquired by Collectors Universe, a company that specializes in grading coins, collectible cards, and other memorabilia, in July 2021.
Bootleg copies, from a collecting standpoint, have no significant value, but the effort to make the game appear as legitimate in online auctions have fooled several collectors.
Prices may vary depending on condition of the packaging, paperwork, whether the item is sealed, how many inserts are retained, and whether the spine card is still present.
