Someone paying $1.56 million for a copy of Super Mario 64 is shocking. However, someone else handing over $600 for Skyrim on Xbox 360 is just downright weird.
A sealed copy of Super Mario 64 selling at auction for $1.56 million over the weekend has been making all sorts of headlines, and rightly so. Not only has it become the most expensive game ever sold, but its price more than doubled the previous record, making it the first game to ever be sold for more than $1 million.
The $1.5 million copy of Super Mario 64 wasn't the only mind-boggling story to come out of Heritage Auctions' virtual lot last weekend, though. Axios reports that a sealed copy of Skyrim on Xbox 360 sold for $600 on the same day. A fraction of the price of the above game, but still what most would deem to be way over the odds for a game that isn't even that old.
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In fact, Skyrim hasn't even celebrated its tenth birthday yet. The Elder Scrolls game launched on November 2011 for Xbox 360 and PS3 and has been ported to just about every other console ever since. The Enhanced Edition, which includes all of the game's DLC, is available on Game Pass right now.
Which begs the question, why would someone pay $600 for it? Well, there is some logic to it. The copy in question received a 9.2 rating from Wata, a service that rates the condition of games and thus determines how much they're worth. Suffice to say, 9.2 out of 10 is pretty good, but again, the game is only nine years old. Odds are there are a fair few copies still out there in a similar state.
According to Kotaku, there's a chance you could land the recently sold copy of Skyrim yourself for just $900. However, the owner isn't looking to sell their brand new nine-year-old $600 game, so it might actually take a little more than that to lure it away from them. The market for old games in good condition is hot right now, and there's a very real chance Super Mario 64's lofty record won't last long once people catch on to this trend and start rooting around in their attics for forgotten games.
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