The Most Expensive Video Games Ever Sold

On This Page

• The record
• The results
• What the grades actually mean, and what they cost
• The controversy, stated precisely
• The test nobody has run
• Top Takeaways to Success
• Frequently Asked Questions

Every list of the most expensive video games shares a blind spot, and it is not a wrong price. It is a missing question.

None of these games has ever been sold twice.

The record

A sealed Super Mario Bros for the NES, graded PSA 9.6 A++, made $3,000,000 at Heritage Auctions over 12 to 13 June 2026. Lot 7453-28025.

What separates it from the other seven-figure copies is not just the grade. It sold inside its original NES Control Deck bundle, a gloss-sticker second-production copy still packaged with the console it shipped with.

The results

Prices realised, from Heritage’s own published records unless noted.

#	Game	Platform	Grade	Price	Sale
1	Super Mario Bros, with Control Deck	NES	PSA 9.6 A++	$3,000,000	Heritage, Jun 2026
2	Super Mario Bros, hangtab	NES	WATA 9.8 A+	$2,000,000	Private buyout, Rally, Aug 2021
3	Super Mario 64	N64	WATA 9.8 A++	$1,560,000	Heritage, 11 Jul 2021
4	The Legend of Zelda, no Rev-A	NES	WATA 9.0 A	$870,000	Heritage, Jul 2021
5	Super Mario Bros, hangtab 3 code	NES	WATA 9.6 A	$720,000	Heritage, 5 Nov 2022
6	The Legend of Zelda, first production	NES	WATA 8.0 A	$705,000	Heritage, 31 Oct 2021
7	Super Mario Bros, hangtab 1 code	NES	WATA 9.6 A+	$660,000	Heritage, 4 Apr 2021
8	Super Mario Bros, hangtab 1 code	NES	PSA 9.8 A+	$575,000	Heritage, Jun 2026
9	Super Mario Bros, hangtab 2 code	NES	WATA 9.4 A	$492,000	Heritage, 31 Oct 2021
10	John Madden Football, cardboard box	Genesis	WATA 9.2 A+	$480,000	Heritage, 29 Jan 2022
11	Mario Bros, gloss sticker	NES	PSA 9.2 A++	$450,000	Heritage, 29 Aug 2026
12	Sonic the Hedgehog	Genesis	WATA 9.4 A	$430,500	Goldin, Sep 2021
13	The Legend of Zelda, Rev-A	NES	WATA 9.6 A+	$384,000	Heritage, 7 Aug 2022
14	The Legend of Zelda, first production	NES	CGC 9.2 A	$375,000	Heritage, 24 Aug 2024
15	Nintendo PlayStation SNES CD-ROM prototype	prototype	ungraded	$360,000	Heritage, 8 Mar 2020
16	Super Mario World, made in Japan	SNES	WATA 9.4 A+	$360,000	Heritage, 11 Jul 2021
17	Sonic the Hedgehog, early production	Genesis	WATA 9.8 A+	$360,000	Heritage, 23 Apr 2022
18	Super Mario Bros 2, first production	NES	WATA 9.8 A+	$324,000	Heritage, 31 Oct 2021
19	Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!	NES	WATA 9.8 A++	$312,000	Heritage, 31 Oct 2021
20	Resident Evil, ridged longbox	PS1	WATA 9.6 A+	$264,000	Heritage, 29 Oct 2021

Row two is not an auction. That copy was owned in fractional shares through the platform Rally, and in August 2021 its roughly 359 shareholders accepted a $2 million private buyout. No bidding, no underbidder, no auction house. It sits at number two on most published rankings of auction results, where it does not belong.

Row twelve went through Goldin, not Heritage, which is another detail almost every list gets wrong.

What the grades actually mean, and what they cost

Two marks, not one.

The box score runs to 10: half-point steps up to 9.0, then 0.2 increments, so 9.2, 9.4, 9.6, 9.8. Heritage’s own guidance calls 9.8 “essentially perfect”, 9.6 “almost flawless, but with a single small imperfection apparent only on close inspection”, and 9.4 “one or two small dents, a thin crease, or rounded corners.”

The seal rating is a letter from C to A++, describing the shrink wrap. A++ is “theoretically perfect, aside from a few light thin surface marks”. A allows “heavier scuffing” and small holes.

Now put a price on the difference. Rows seven and nine are the same title and the same variant family, sold four months apart:

• WATA 9.6 A+: $660,000
• WATA 9.4 A: $492,000

One notch of box score and one notch of seal, and $168,000 changes hands. That is not a market pricing a game. It is a market pricing a certificate.

The controversy, stated precisely

This topic carries an allegation history that most listicles skip entirely and a few overstate. The accurate version matters.

In August 2021 the Australian YouTuber and speedrunner Karl Jobst published a video alleging conflicts of interest between the grading firm WATA Games and Heritage Auctions, arguing that rising retro-game prices were being talked up by parties with overlapping interests.

Heritage rejected any allegation of shill bidding or market manipulation. WATA called the claims baseless.

A federal class action followed in May 2022, against WATA and its parent Collectors Universe. Heritage Auctions was never a defendant in it. No class was ever certified across three attempts. The court addressed summary judgment in May 2025, then in March 2026 issued an order noting it had heard nothing from any party for nearly six months. The plaintiffs did not respond, and on 31 March 2026 the case was dismissed without prejudice for failure to respond.

That is an abandonment, not a ruling. No court has made any finding of manipulation, fraud or shill bidding against anyone, and no regulator is documented as having opened or concluded an investigation.

One structural fact belongs alongside it, stated neutrally. Collectors Universe acquired WATA in July 2021, and in October 2025 WATA was folded into PSA, which Collectors Universe also owns. The $3 million record copy carries a PSA grade. The grader that certified the most expensive video game ever sold is the corporate successor to the grader at the centre of the 2021 allegations, under the same ownership.

Draw from that what you like. It is a fact about the market’s structure and it is absent from every competing page.

The test nobody has run

Here is what I went looking for and could not find.

In the sneaker market, one trophy lot has been sold twice: Michael Jordan’s 1984 Air Ships made $1,472,000 in 2021 and $624,000 in 2023, a fall of 57%. One resale, one answer.

In sealed games there is no such data point. Not one record-setting copy has ever returned to auction. Not the $3m Mario, not the $2m, not the $1.56m Super Mario 64, not the $870,000 Zelda. The mid-market is widely reported to have fallen hard after 2021, by 50% to 90% depending whose analysis you read, though I could find no auditable index behind those figures. Meanwhile the top of the market kept setting records through 2025 and 2026.

So the position is this. Prices at the very top are rising. Prices in the middle apparently collapsed. And the expensive copies have never been resold, which means every seven-figure valuation in this category rests on exactly one transaction each, with nothing to check it against.

My read is that this is the single most important thing to know about the category, and it is not a criticism of anyone. A market where the best assets never trade twice is not necessarily overpriced. It is simply untested, and untested is a different thing from proven. When one of these copies does come back to auction, that sale will tell you more than the previous twenty combined.