Old Game Cartridges as Collectibles: A Dealer's Honest View

Two summers ago a man brought a carrier bag of Nintendo cartridges to my stand at a Harrogate fair, tipped them onto a Georgian card table and asked what they were worth. He had read that a sealed copy of Super Mario 64 had sold for over a million dollars. His were loose, sticker-scuffed and one had a child's name written on the label in biro. I had to tell him that, as a group, they were worth roughly what a decent Victorian tea caddy fetches.

That conversation happens more often than you would think, and not only with video games. Every collecting field goes through a phase when a few record prices convince ordinary owners they are sitting on a fortune. Old game cartridges are in that phase now, and the lessons the antiques trade learned the hard way apply almost word for word.

How the record prices came about

The headlines date from 2021. In July of that year, Heritage Auctions sold a factory-sealed Super Mario 64 graded 9.8 A++ by the grading firm Wata for 1.56 million dollars. A sealed copy of The Legend of Zelda had sold for 870,000 dollars a few days earlier. In August, a sealed Super Mario Bros. reportedly changed hands privately for 2 million.

What the headlines left out is that every one of those games was sealed, graded near the top of the scale, and among the rarest production variants. A loose cartridge of Super Mario 64 is one of the most common games of its generation; Nintendo sold over eleven million copies. The same title, in two different conditions, sits in two entirely different markets.

Later in 2021 those prices came under scrutiny when critics raised questions about links between the grading company, the auction house and some early investors. Nothing in that dispute was settled in a way that restored confidence quickly, and prices for graded sealed games softened through 2022 and 2023. I mention it not to take a side, but because any dealer who lived through the Beanie Baby years, or the boom and bust in Clarice Cliff in the early 2000s, will recognise the shape.

Why most cartridges are worth less than owners expect

In antiques we say that condition, rarity and demand decide value, in roughly that order for ordinary pieces. Games follow the same rule, with condition carrying even more weight because so many survive.

The ordinary run of loose cartridges from the 1980s and 1990s, the Mario, Sonic and FIFA titles that sit in most loft boxes, typically sell for between 5 and 40 pounds each on the secondary market as of this autumn. Complete copies with the original box and manual can fetch two to five times the loose price. Sealed copies are a different market altogether. A handful of genuinely scarce titles, often late releases with small print runs such as some later Super Nintendo role-playing games, command hundreds even when loose.

Rarity sells the headline. Condition pays the bill.

The man at my stand had none of the scarce titles. What he did have, though he had not noticed it, was a boxed Game Boy with its original polystyrene insert. Collectors value those inserts the way we value an original fitted case for a silver tea set, and that one item was worth more than all the loose cartridges together.

Reproductions are the real hazard

In my trade, the reproduction problem has a long history: Victorian copies of Georgian furniture, twentieth-century Staffordshire figures cast from period moulds, transfer-printed wares made to pass as hand-painted. Games now have the same problem, and newer collectors are rarely ready for it. Our general guide to telling antique, vintage and reproduction apart covers the principle; the specifics for cartridges are these.

• Label print. Reproduction labels are often slightly blurred, too glossy, or a shade off in colour. Compare against a known genuine copy under daylight, not a phone torch.
• The shell. Genuine Nintendo cartridges usually carry moulded text and a manufacturer's mark on the back. Reproduction shells often have softer edges, mismatched plastic tone, or Phillips screws where the originals used security screws.
• The board inside. This is the decisive test, much like pulling a drawer to see the dovetails. Genuine boards carry the maker's name and a date code; reproductions often use a single modern chip and a green board with no markings. You need a small security screwdriver, which costs a few pounds.
• Price that seems too kind. A rare title offered well under the going rate is far more likely to be a reproduction than a lucky find.

Just as a period chest can carry later handles, games are sometimes "married": a genuine box with a reproduction cartridge, or a genuine cartridge with a reprinted manual. Ask to see each component, and treat the set as only as good as its weakest part.

Where the antiques habits help

The collectors I see doing best with games come from other fields. They ask for photographs of every side, including the back of the label. They read condition descriptions closely for phrases like "light wear" that hide a torn corner. They ask how an item was stored, since damp lofts warp boxes and sunlight fades labels just as surely as they fade an Edwardian print. If condition reports are new to you, our guide to reading a condition report before buying is written for antiques but transfers directly.

They also avoid the auction-room traps we all fall into early: bidding past a set limit, ignoring the buyer's premium, and assuming the saleroom's description is a guarantee. The full list is in auction house mistakes new collectors make.

I will add one honest limit. I deal in Victorian and Edwardian pieces, not games, and I lean on two specialist friends when a cartridge crosses my table. I would not value a sealed or graded game myself, and I would be wary of any general dealer who claims to.

If you have a box in the loft

This week, sort it into three piles: loose cartridges, items with any original packaging, and consoles. Photograph each item front and back in daylight. Then look up completed sales, not asking prices, for the five items that look most promising, and write the figures down. Do not clean labels, remove stickers or open sealed items before you have done that; as with silver, the wrong kind of cleaning can take more value off than it adds. More on where collecting and play overlap is in our games section.