The pandemic has changed the rules of the collectibles market. When people were stuck at home, everyone started rediscovering some forgotten things—including those dusty old game cartridges. Vintage video games that no one paid much attention to suddenly became hot commodities in investors’ eyes, with their value skyrocketing twentyfold in just a year.

What is at the core of this craze? Two Italian plumbers. That's right, the iconic brothers from Nintendo—since the mid-1980s, during the era of modern gaming consoles—they have been deeply embedded in an entire generation’s memory. By the early 2020s, owning a correct version of a cartridge could really make you rich overnight.

Let’s talk about how crazy this market is. In July 2020, a sealed copy of "Super Mario Bros." sold for $114k at Heritage Auctions, setting a record at the time. But that was just the beginning. Less than a year later, another copy of the same game sold for $2 million—an increase of 17 times. This isn’t high-end art or rare antiques; it’s a game cartridge from over 40 years ago.

Summer 2021 was especially wild. In early July, "Super Mario 64" sold for $1.56 million, becoming the first video game to break the million-dollar mark. Released in 1996, this game was one of the bestsellers of its time and the first Mario game to introduce a 3D gameplay experience. Two days later, "The Legend of Zelda" broke the record again, selling for $870k. All of these were unopened original cartridges, which are extremely rare for video games.

By August, things got even more absurd. The New York Times reported that an anonymous collector paid $2 million for an original 1985 Nintendo console version of "Super Mario Bros." This transaction was conducted through Rally, a platform that specializes in buying and selling collectibles and tokenizing their shares for investors. Interestingly, Rally itself had bought this cartridge just a year earlier for only $140k.

Why are these game prices so crazy? First, these are genuine rare items. Most game cartridges get damaged after being played, but these are complete, unopened originals. Second, they represent cultural icons of a particular era. For Generation X, these games are not just entertainment—they are youthful memories.

The story of "Super Mario Bros." is particularly interesting. The version that sold for $6.6 million was bought as a Christmas gift in 1986 and then forgotten in a drawer for 35 years. When it was rediscovered, it remained in perfect original condition. Such cases are not uncommon for this generation of games—many people never thought these things would be worth money, so they casually left them in some corner.

Now, video games have become a multi-million-dollar collectible market, and it continues to evolve. As one of the most influential games in history, "Super Mario Bros." is undoubtedly a symbol of the highest grossing game of all time, and the soaring value of its collectibles reflects a reevaluation of the cultural significance of classic games across the industry. If you still have old game cartridges at home, it might really be worth checking them out now.