This weekend, the auction site Heritage Auctions has twice set a new world record for the selling price of a video game. The site had organized the sale of a collection of 443 games over three days, which concluded this Sunday.
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Friday, a cartridge of The Legend of Zelda for the console Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) offered for sale by the site Heritage Auctions came as a surprise when the auction skyrocketed. The sale ended with an amount of 870,000 dollars (approximately 734,000 euros). The game, released in 1987 and still in its original packaging, received a Wata rating of 9 out of 10 for game condition and A (out of a maximum of A ++) for packaging.
This is one of the only two still sealed copies of the “NES R” version of the video game, which had been replaced by the much more popular “Rev-A” version. It was preceded by the even rarer version “NES TM”, which constitutes the very first production of cartridges of the game and of which only one copy still exists under seal.
The first time a game exceeds a million dollars
However, this new record did not last, and on Sunday it was shattered by the game. Super Mario 64 for the console Nintendo 64. The auction went up to 1.56 million dollars (1.31 million euros). The cartridge, produced in 1996, was again in its original packaging. It received a near-perfect Wata rating of 9.8 A ++, the highest score of any copy of the game ever reviewed, which certainly helped bring it to that historic amount.
According to Eric Bradley, spokesperson for Heritage Auctions, this is the first time that a game has sold over a million dollars. The retrogaming market has enjoyed growing success in recent years with many nostalgic looking games rare. Last April, the game Super Mario Bros of 1986, also on the NES, had already set a new record at 660,000 dollars (approximately 557,000 euros).
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