Vintage Video Game Sells For Record Breaking $1.56 Million

An anonymous bidder payed a whopping $1.56 million for an unopened copy of Super Mario 64 on Sunday, July 11.

Dallas-based auction house Heritage Auctions said the game broke its previous record price for a single video game.

“I was blindsided, to be quite honest with you. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect the price that was realized would become a reality," Valarie McLeckie of Heritage Auctions told the New York Times.

Super Mario 64 was originally sold for around $60 when it first came out in 1996 for the Nintendo 64. It was incredibly popular so there's plenty of used copies for sale online for less than $100. What makes this particular copy so special is that it's still in its original packaging.

Days before Super Mario 64 went up for auction, Heritage sold a sealed copy of The Legend of Zelda for $870,000. That game originally came out in 1987.

Prior to this month, the most expensive single copy of a single video ever sold was an unopened copy of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. that fetched $660,000. The original owner sold the game after they forgot it in a drawer for 35 years.