One of the most popular video game consoles of all time is the Nintendo Entertainment System, colloquially known as the NES. Its flagship game, Super Mario Bros., was a hit and became the symbol of the Nintendo company.
Given the system’s success and the popularity of the games created for it, Topps decided to capitalize and released the 1989 Topps Nintendo set. The set included a checklist of 93 cards, 60 scratch-off game cards, and 33 sticker cards.
There were six games featured in the set: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Punch-Out!!, and Double Dragon. All games were featured in the 60-card scratch-off set, while only Mario, Zelda, Punch-Out!!, and Double Dragon were featured in the sticker set. The sticker set also contained tips for the user to help them with gameplay.
Sales Have Skyrocketted for Nintendo Cards
Numbers don’t lie, and doing a little research, you’ll see that demand has grown for this set, especially the higher-graded ones. The 1989 Topps Nintendo Super Mario Bros., graded a PSA 10, sold for an average of $183.56 from January 2026 through May 2026, based on five sales recorded by Card Ladder. But the last two sales, which occurred on September 11, 2026, and October 2, 2026, were for $535 and $900, respectively.
If you do the math, the $535 sale shows an incredible increase of roughly 172 percent, and an even bigger jump of 391 percent increase comparing the latest sale with the average of the first six months of the year.
Scratch-off Cards Rising In Value Too
The market increase isn’t just affecting high-grade, high-dollar cards from this set. Take a PSA 9 of card #9 from the set, the Scratch-Off Punch-Out!! card.
According to sales data from the PSA certification verification page, this card last sold for $50 on September 30. However, a little more than four months before, a sale was recorded on May 19 and went for just $14.53.
The Top Sale of a 1989 Topps Nintendo Card
The highest-selling card from the 1989 Topps Nintendo set is a card from a sequel. It’s the 1989 Topps Nintendo Mario Madness from Mario Bros. 2. Graded a PSA 10, the card recently sold for a whopping $7,700. The sale was made on October 2, 2026,the seller accepted the $7,700 offer
Even though the seller took roughly $2,000 less than the listed price, it still blew the previous sale out of the water. Card Ladder shows that the last sale, before the $7,700 sale, was for a meager $372 on May 11, 2025.
Looking back further, at all the sales before the highest one, Card Ladder shows that from December 8, 2021, to May 11, 2025, the card sold for an average of $314. Yes, it is over a five-year period, but the percentage increase from the previous seven sales to the highest one is an astonishing 2,353.23 percent.
With the growing popularity of non-sports trading cards, it’s unclear how high this market could rise. But for now, it looks like a bull market for the 1989 Topps Nintendo cards.
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COLE BENZ
After graduating from the University of North Dakota in 2008, Cole worked as an advertising copywriter until shifting to print journalism a few years later. Managing three weekly newspapers in the Dakotas, Cole won numerous awards from the North Dakota Newspaper Association including Best of the Dakotas and, their top award, General Excellence. He returned to collecting in 2021 and has since combined his passion for writing with his love of cards. Cole also writes for the Sports Cards Nonsense newsletter and has made guest appearances on multiple sports card collecting podcasts including Sports Cards Nonsense, and the Eephus Baseball Cards Podcast.
IG: coleryan411
X: @colebenz
