By Ryan McIntee

If you’ve been following the retro game market at all recently, you most likely have seen articles talking about a sealed graded copy of Super Mario 64 selling for a whopping $1.56 million. The copy was unique because it was graded by WATA games at a 9.8, A++ grade. This number turned quite a bit of heads at the steep price tag, since most people are aware of the volume of sealed copies of Super Mario 64 in existence. As a result, a lot of attention has been directed at the grading company, WATA, and whether or not their practices can be considered ethical, or whether or not the value of the sold copy was actually genuine. This was due to their connection with the auction house, Heritage Auctions, who sold this copy. Heritage has been discovered to have direct connections to the company as well.

*A graded copy of Super Mario 64. This is NOT a specific copy in discussion.

Recently, Goldin Auctions placed an identical copy of Super Mario 64 up for sale, also WATA graded at 9.8 A++ rating. The auction ended on September 18, 2021 with the sale price being listed as $799,500. You can find the auction listing here. Now to do some quick math for you:

799,500 / 1,560,000 = .5125 = 51.25%

In the world of collectibles, a price tag dropping so substantial is not something you want to see. You would not want to spend $1.5 million on something only for it to be worth 51% of its value the next time it is sold. That ruins the value of the investment you just purchased.

There are many potential factors for the steep drop including fraud, an inflated market, and overpopulation, to name a few. Overpopulation is a major concern currently since neither WATA nor VGA currently publish population reports, though VGA has stated they intend to in the near future. Heritage Auctions currently has 3 other similarly graded WATA copies of Super Mario 64 up for auction. With this many copies moving in such a short time, it indicates that the item is not as rare as many want to believe. It is also worth noting there is a similar auction that ended recently, also through Goldin auction. There was a VGA graded 95 Sealed Super Mario 64 that sold for $240,000. This listing can be found here. This 95 grade is comparable to a WATA 9.8 A++, and seeing its price having a huge discrepancy indicates that the market is unstable and unreliable.

The future of the graded game market could be determined in the next couple of months when the lots by Heritage go live on October 11th. If the price drops any lower, the value of these games will certainly have concerns for those who have already invested so much in them and the short lived bubble could burst. Keep your eyes peeled, folks. Don’t get fooled.