Where value is proven
Auctions are where collecting is put to the test: that is where the value of a piece is really measured. The Games Market watches the great international sales and, at the same time, has already made its own work.
Heritage 7453, three million in a single room
June 2026, Heritage Signature session 7453: 157 lots of sealed, certified games and one title that traveled the world, a NES Super Mario Bros. still shrink-wrapped, hammered at 3 million dollars. It is one of the highest results ever recorded for a video game. But the interesting number is not the peak: it is everything sitting underneath it.
The podium
Super Mario Bros. · $3.00M
PSA 9.6 A++ Sealed, Gloss Sticker, Second Production, with Control Deck. NES, 1985. Lot #28025.
Super Mario Bros. · $575,000
PSA 9.8 A+ Sealed, Hangtab, a mid production run. Same title, different variant, an order of magnitude below the leader.
The Legend of Zelda · $375,000
Sealed, first production, no revision code. NES, 1987. Below the top three lots, the auction changes order of magnitude at once.
The three million dollar lot is a PSA 9.6, one step below the 9.8 that sold for $575,000, and yet it is worth more than five times as much. At the very top of the market the highest grade is not what sets the price: the rarity of the variant does. Condition counts, unrepeatability counts more.
The same game, six different prices
In the same auction Super Mario Bros. appears six times, with results ranging from 3 million dollars to a little over three thousand. It is not a cataloging error: these are six different objects that share nothing but a title. What separates them is the print variant, the type of seal and the grade. It is the clearest possible demonstration of what grading measures: it turns differences almost invisible to the eye into value anyone can read. Beneath the marquee names, the session shows its depth: most lots closed under five thousand dollars, with NES alone at a median of $4,750. The millions live in three pieces, not in the price list.
The seal is the price, the grade is the market. An auction that hammers a single game at 3 million dollars while placing dozens of lots under five thousand describes a market with a very high peak and a broad, liquid base. That is exactly the space The Games Market works in: bringing to Europe the same rigor of reading, from the record piece to the entry-level one.
Source · Heritage Auctions, Signature® Auction 7453, June 2026. Full analysis by The Games Market.
Heritage 7452, the market under the lens
Heritage Auctions sale number 7452, held in Dallas on March 27 and 28, 2026, is a sharp snapshot of the market's health. At its center the TheGraded80s_Kid collection, built over more than twenty years of targeted buying, presented in two distinct sessions: one in the room and one online.
Where the value concentrates
The price distribution describes a market running at two speeds: a broad, liquid base in the $1,000–$5,000 band, home to 60% of the lots, and a small elite of pieces that decides the final numbers. Forty-four lots went past ten thousand dollars, and the ranking is led by a sealed Resident Evil 9.8 A+ at $125,000, the finest known example in the world, a first-print Ridged Longbox edition.
Six lots in ten closed between $1,000 and $5,000: 190 lots in all, the band that gives the market its depth. Above it, a narrow elite decides the final numbers: 44 lots past ten thousand dollars (14% of the catalog), led by the Resident Evil top lot at $125,000.
The three pieces that tell the story of the sale
Resident Evil · $125,000
WATA 9.8 A+ sealed, Ridged Longbox edition, first production run. The finest known example in the world for this title.
Shikishi Miyamoto · $87,500
An original board signed by Shigeru Miyamoto, with Link from Zelda. A new category altogether: video game art by its authors.
Pokémon · 30 lots, $230,438
On its own, the most liquid franchise of the sale. No sign of a slowdown in demand for first-generation Japanese Game Boy titles.
The signal that the market has grown up
The most eloquent figure is not the price of the top lot, it is the comparison with the past. In 2021, at the height of the post-pandemic bubble, a lower-graded Resident Evil (WATA 9.6 A+) sold for $264,000. Five years later, an example with a higher grade closes at less than half that. The correct reading is not "the market is falling," it is "the market has normalized": the speculative phase is behind us, prices reflect real value and the fundamentals are holding.
higher grade
Heritage 7452 says that the global market for graded video games has entered its adult phase: demand is broad, deep and spread across more than thirteen platforms. Regional editions and pieces with a documented history become the lever of value. For anyone working in Europe, where TGM operates every day, this is the moment to give domestic editions the same professional treatment the US market gives its own.
Source · Heritage Auctions, Signature® Auction 7452, March 2026. Full analysis by The Games Market.
Our own proof, the TGM auctions
For us, auctions are not a project on paper. Pop Culture #1 Video Games was the first institutional European auction devoted entirely to graded collectible video games. Two sessions inside the catalog of Meeting Art, one of Italy's long-established auction houses: the signal that certified sealed games are ready to enter the historic auction circuits, alongside prints, coins and memorabilia.
50 graded video game lots brought to the block in two distinct sessions between March 18 and March 25, 2026, €69,500 in gross hammer results (€55,600 net of the 25% auction commission), full sell-through. Bidders from four countries: Italy, Germany, France, the United Kingdom.
Session 1 · March 18, 2026
The opening session sold twenty-five lots, posting the higher average of the two and the top lot of the entire operation. The catalog was absorbed in full, with the peaks concentrated on the pair of LucasArts titles for FM Towns, the Japanese platform of the Nineties.
Monkey Island 2 in its version for FM Towns, the Japanese platform, sold at €8,900. Next came an Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis on the same platform at €5,900. Outside Japan, two LucasArts pieces like these are collector icons: in an Italian saleroom, graded and told properly, the European market answers with international prices.
Session 2 · March 25, 2026
The second session confirmed the structural figure (full sell-through) with a lower average per lot: the catalog was built to draw new collectors at the entry level, not to repeat the record. The sign of depth comes from the bidders: one hundred percent online participation.
Of 50 lots, 39 were graded by TGM (78%) and generated 87% of the hammer total, with an average of €1,241 per lot against the €655 of the lots graded by the American competitors. The five highest-priced pieces of the entire auction are all TGM certified: a first on an institutional European stage, and the market rewarded the European grader.
Auctions close the circle: a piece is certified, its value is established and it finds its price in front of the market.
The magazine, culture and market data
There is a story around the market, and The Games Market tells it through a magazine of its own. Not just news: analysis of international auctions, price movements, grading trends. It is how we read video game collecting, between pop culture and hard numbers, and how we hand it back to the people who buy, sell and collect.
Bring a piece to auction
If you own an important piece, the TGM auctions are the right stage for it. Preliminary appraisal, certification, catalog: write to us to talk about your lot.