Sealed Game Market Check: July 2026
Our first full comp sweep of the summer: 3,677 eBay sold listings across the 113 titles we track, pulled July 16. The raw sealed grails are holding their line, the grading cliff is steeper than ever, and the trading volume lives in the Xbox and PS2 aisles.
The short answer
The sealed market looks steady but top-heavy in our July 16 sweep of 3,677 eBay sold listings. Raw sealed grails top out at $600 to $700 (Super Mario Bros., Resident Evil 2), graded slabs of the same era run $2,325 to $11,500, and the heaviest trading is in Xbox and PS2 titles.
What This Check Covers
This check is built from 3,677 eBay sold-listing comps across the 113 titles in our catalog, pulled on July 16, 2026. Each sale is classified into one of four non-overlapping condition tiers by its listing title: 2,810 loose and CIB sales, 658 raw sealed sales, 178 graded sealed sales, and 31 graded CIB sales. Every number below is a median of real sold prices within a tier, with outliers trimmed before the median is taken.
One honest caveat before the numbers: sample sizes vary a lot by title. The busiest games logged 80-plus sales in the window, while some flagship sealed medians rest on 3 to 5 sales. We quote the sale count next to every figure so you can weigh each number for what it is.
Raw Sealed: The Grails Hold Their Line
Among titles with at least 3 raw sealed sales, the top of the market is familiar. Resident Evil 2 on PS1 leads at a $700 median (3 sales), followed by Super Mario Bros. on NES at $600 (12 sales), The Legend of Zelda on NES at $560 (12 sales), the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Collector's Edition on PS5 at $500 (6 sales), and Kirby's Adventure on NES just under $500 at $499.77 (3 sales).
The two NES pillars are the most reliable medians in the tier, with a dozen sales each behind them. It is also worth noting that a current-generation collector's edition sits among the cartridge-era grails: FF7 Rebirth's $500 median across 6 sales shows the modern CE market trading right alongside 40-year-old shrinkwrap, with The Last of Us Survival Edition on PS3 at $312 (4 sales) not far behind.
The Grading Cliff Is Real
The graded tier is where the market goes vertical. The top graded medians in the sweep: Street Fighter II on SNES at $11,500 (3 sales), Super Mario Bros. 3 on NES at about $6,704 (3 sales), The Legend of Zelda at $6,499 (5 sales), Pokemon Emerald on GBA at $5,000 (3 sales), and Super Mario Bros. at $2,325 (7 sales).
Where a title has at least 3 sales in both the raw sealed and graded tiers, the slab premium is stark. The Legend of Zelda trades graded at $6,499 against $560 raw sealed, more than 11 times the price. Halo: Combat Evolved runs $483 graded against $55 raw, nearly 9 times. Super Mario Bros. runs $2,325 graded against $600 raw, close to 4 times. Most of that gap is authentication: buyers at these prices are paying a recognized grader to stand behind the seal.
A Warning in the Pokemon Emerald Numbers
One number in this sweep is a flashing light. Pokemon Emerald's raw sealed median is just $70 across 5 sales, which sits below its own loose-cartridge median of $205 across 13 sales, while graded copies bring $5,000. When a market prices an unslabbed seal below a bare cartridge, it is telling you it does not believe the seal. GBA Pokemon titles are among the most counterfeited and resealed games in the hobby, and this is what that risk looks like in sold data: on heavily faked titles, shrinkwrap without a slab is worth very little.
Milder versions of the same inversion show up at the bottom of the sealed-to-loose table: Star Fox 64 sold sealed at a $27.99 median against $33.51 loose, and Shenmue at $41 sealed against $44.99 loose. Across the 37 titles with 3 or more sales in both tiers, the median sealed-to-loose multiple is 2.5x, and the spread runs from Kirby's Adventure at nearly 16 times its $31.99 loose median down to those sub-1x inversions.
Where the Volume Is
Price lives on the NES and SNES shelf, but volume lives a generation later. The most-traded titles in the sweep, counting all condition tiers, are Ninja Gaiden and Halo: Combat Evolved on the original Xbox with 82 sold comps each, followed by Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (76), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (73), and Fable (72). By platform, Xbox logged 526 comps, PS2 519, PS1 451, and N64 412.
That is the useful shape of this market in one sentence: the cartridge-era grails carry the price, and the sixth-generation disc library carries the liquidity. If you are buying to hold a trophy, the NES tier is where the scarcity is. If you ever need to convert back to cash on a timeline, the Xbox and PS2 aisles are where buyers show up every single day. These medians refresh as new comps bake, and every tracked title's current tier-by-tier numbers live on its catalog page.
Prices & references in this guide
Frequently asked questions
- What is the most valuable game in the July 2026 comp data?
- By graded median, Street Fighter II on SNES at $11,500 across 3 graded sales, followed by Super Mario Bros. 3 at about $6,704 and The Legend of Zelda at $6,499. Among raw sealed copies, Resident Evil 2 on PS1 ($700 median) and Super Mario Bros. on NES ($600) lead the sweep.
- How much does grading add to a sealed game's price?
- In the July 16, 2026 data, titles with at least 3 sales in both tiers show graded medians running roughly 2 to 11 times raw sealed: The Legend of Zelda at $6,499 graded versus $560 raw, Halo: Combat Evolved at $483 versus $55, and Super Mario Bros. at $2,325 versus $600. The premium is largely authentication of the seal.
- Which retro games trade most often on eBay?
- Original Xbox and PS2 titles dominate volume. Ninja Gaiden and Halo: Combat Evolved logged 82 sold comps each in our July 16 sweep across all condition tiers, with Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (76), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (73), and Fable (72) close behind. Xbox (526 comps) and PS2 (519) are the busiest platforms we track.