One of your classic Pokemon games could be worth $17,000 thanks to a simple mistake

We don't need to tell you that the video game market is worth some big bucks, as auction sites peddling retro games and consoles are popping up like Digletts.

With some 489 million units sold worldwide, Pokemon is one of the biggest gaming franchises out there.

Even as we gear up for the release of Pokemon Legends: Z-A on the Switch 2, many of you are obsessed with catching 'em all in terms of Pocket Monsters and their various outings.

Going back to the very start, there's a reason that the original duo of Pokemon Red/Blue are by far an away the series' best-selling video games, totalling 31.37 million sold since Nintendo gripped us all with Pokemon Fever in 1996. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's 26.79 million units sold put them a fair way from Red and Blue's record, and with the former also having the boost of digital releases, the OG's are sitting pretty at the top.

Red and Blue are the best-selling Pokemon Games (Game Freak)

In 2024, the figures speak for themselves thanks to 95.4% of all game sales being digital, meaning our cartridge and disk days could soon be behind us. Thankfully for video game preservationists, the second-hand market is booming.

It's also good news for those who might want to earn a bit of extra cash, with the most expensive video game ever sold being a copy of 1996's Super Mario 64, fetching an eye-watering $1.56 million.

Even though the sale of Pokemon games will likely never come close to the ultra-rare Pikachu Illustrator card fetching a bank-busting $5.275 million, you can still make a not-so-small fortune from Pokemon Red and Blue.

The near-mint Pokemon Blue is worth thousands (Heritage Auctions)

A rare copy of Pokemon Red holds Heritage Auctions' record for the most expensive entry in the franchise, going under the hammer for $156,000.00 in 2021.

The auction site currently has another sale on, for a similarly rare Pokemon Blue, currently being listed for just $17,000. 2021's Pokemon Red auction included a Wata 9.8 grading, while this Pokemon Blue one is CGC 9.6. The CGC site grades this as "a very well-preserved collectible with several minor manufacturing or handling defects," with the sealed copy expected to fetch a pretty penny.

As for what makes this different from your standard copy of Pokemon Blue, Heritage Auctions reminds us that this Game Boy game includes a rare misprint on the back of the box that refers to it as 'Red Version'. Although this was quickly corrected in later print runs, it makes it something of a rarity. The site also states that it's the second-highest-graded first-production copy of Pokemon Blue that it's ever offered.

A look at previous Heritage lots shows that near-mint copies of Red and Blue are regularly going for over $100,000. We know most of you probably ripped into your copies and immediately started playing in 1996, but if you manage to have a sealed copy lying up in the attic, now could be a great time to dust it off.