An original 1981 promotional poster for Donkey Kong has sold for $329,400, a price both IGN and Dexerto report is the highest ever paid at auction for a piece of original video game artwork.

The drawing, created by artist Leslie Cabarga as an arcade flyer for Nintendo of America, shows Donkey Kong hoisting a barrel overhead while a determined Mario — then known simply as 'Jumpman' — climbs a building to rescue Pauline from behind her hulking captor.

What makes the sale even more remarkable is the artwork's brush with destruction: according to Landry Pop Auctions, as relayed by IGN, former Nintendo of America employee Donna Darbous rescued the poster from a collection of company materials that had been marked for disposal, saving what would become the most valuable piece of game art ever to reach the block.

The hammer price did not just beat the previous record — it obliterated it. IGN and Dexerto both note that the prior mark for original video game art was set in 2023 at Heritage Auctions, when the original cover artwork for Prince of Persia sold for $63,000.

Landry Pop Auctions put the moment in perspective in a press release quoted by both outlets: 'Long before Mario became the face of a multibillion-dollar entertainment franchise, he was a character on an arcade flyer.'

The auction house called the $329,400 result 'a striking reminder of how far Nintendo's most famous plumber has come, and how valuable the surviving artwork from his earliest days has become.'

For art-world watchers, it signals that early promotional illustration — long treated as disposable commercial material — can now command museum-grade prices.

The flyer headlined Landry Pop Auctions' 'Jumpman: The Beginning of an Icon' sale, and IGN reports the rest of the historic Nintendo lineup also soared past estimates.

Original artwork of Mario and Luigi from Super Mario Bros. fetched $17,080 — IGN says that was nearly three times its $6,000 estimate — while original artwork of a Goomba brought in $10,370, more than double its $5,000 estimate.

A first-production 1985 copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES, graded 8.0 by PSA, went for $34,160, and a Nintendo of America employee orientation VHS tape featuring Mario sold for $3,660 against a $1,500 estimate.

The sale lands amid a heated stretch for game collectibles: IGN also notes a UK retired decorator sold a Pokemon card collection for $2 million earlier this month, and in June a PSA-graded 9.6 A++ copy of Super Mario Bros. became the most expensive video game ever at $3 million.

The sale is a clear signal about where collectors see value in the art of gaming's formative years.

The artwork that broke the record was not finished box art or gallery work, but a piece of functional trade promotion — an arcade flyer drawn to sell cabinets in 1981 — which both IGN and Dexerto frame as the character's first-ever public appearance.

That provenance, combined with a documented survival story from the brink of the garbage bin, is precisely what made it irresistible.

The auction house's own framing, as reported by both outlets, positions surviving early Nintendo artwork as a finite and rapidly appreciating category, with each surviving sheet from Nintendo of America's promotional era now treated as an icon-making document rather than office clutter.

Expect collectors and estates to re-examine attics and archives for anything else that once lived near the disposal pile.