Original Donkey Kong Flyer Art Sells for Record $329,400

The original 1981 artwork for Donkey Kong's arcade flyer sold for $329,400 at auction, making it the most expensive piece of original video game artwork ever sold, per IGN. Not bad for a piece of art that was once headed for a company dumpster.

The artwork, painted by Leslie Cabarga for Nintendo of America's arcade flyer, depicts Jumpman — later renamed Mario — climbing toward Pauline while Donkey Kong hoists a barrel overhead. It survives in two pieces, a painted cardstock background and an acetate overlay, and owes its existence to Donna Darbous, then an advertising manager at Nintendo, who retrieved it from a dumpster when a storage room was emptied — with her boss's permission.

Auction house Landry Pop had estimated the piece at $100,000 to $150,000; the final price more than doubled the high end. It also demolished the previous record for original game artwork — Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia cover art, which sold for $63,000 in 2023 — by more than five times.

"Long before Mario became the face of a multibillion-dollar entertainment franchise, he was a character on an arcade flyer," Landry Pop Auctions said in a press release. "The $329,400 result is a striking reminder of how far Nintendo's most famous plumber has come."

The details

• Final price: $329,400, against a $100,000-$150,000 estimate
• Previous record: $63,000 (Prince of Persia cover art, 2023)
• Key feature: original art of Mario's first appearance, when he was still Jumpman
• Provenance: saved from a Nintendo dumpster by advertising manager Donna Darbous

The sale anchored the auction house's Jumpman: The Beginning of an Icon event — 49 lots, 36 of them from Darbous's collection. Other results included original Super Mario Bros. production art of Mario and Luigi at $17,080, a Goomba illustration at $10,370, and a Nintendo employee orientation VHS at $3,660 — proof that even corporate onboarding materials can outperform an index fund.