Root via your drawers, and verify that cardboard field within the attic: 3DS costs are going via the roof. As noticed by X account Pirat_Nation, the previous Nintendo handheld is now promoting secondhand for as a lot as or greater than they did at launch.
The 3DS, initially launched in 2010, was formally discontinued in 2020. A successor to the massively profitable Nintendo DS, it matched its predecessor’s two-screen clamshell design, however this time with a stereoscopic 3D display screen on the highest half that didn’t require carrying magic glasses. It was, regardless of the way you may bear in mind issues, a phenomenal success, promoting a wild 75.94 million models throughout its ten years and numerous incarnations. But, regardless of this obvious ubiquity, demand for the gadgets is at present skyrocketing such {that a} used 3DS XL—which you can have picked up a yr in the past for underneath $100—can proper now fetch you upward of $250.
3DS Costs Are Spiking
This Decade-Outdated Nintendo Handheld Is Now Value Virtually as A lot as a Change 2
New 3DS XL fashions are sometimes promoting for $200 to $350 used.
Costs are more likely to maintain climbing. pic.twitter.com/s0SZJecvzM
— Pirat_Nation 🔴 (@Pirat_Nation) December 29, 2025
Given the bigger 3DS XL value $200 on launch (which itself was $50 cheaper than the unique 3DS at launch), it is a huge worth. It goes even increased in the event you’re searching for the so-called New Nintendo 3DS XL, the 2014 model of the hand held that added a brand new C-Stick and a greater CPU, which you’ll wrestle to select up in good situation underneath $280. (When you scour eBay you may at first declare, “This idiot so-called ‘journalist’ has it all wrong!” till you look a bit nearer and spot the decrease costs shall be for Japanese-only LL fashions, or listings that finally reveal particulars about broken LCD screens and the like.) It’s not fully clear what’s driving this new curiosity; there hasn’t been a big soar in piracy methods since customized firmware outmoded the necessity for flashcarts just a few years again. Nonetheless, the 3DS stays an superb gaming gadget.
Whereas the 3D impact was by no means one thing that actually labored for me (with imperfect eyesight, it simply appeared blurry and unconvincing, and I’d inevitably simply swap the impact off in each new recreation), it’s basically a sooner, larger, and higher Nintendo DS (the most effective console ever made, clearly), and is backwards appropriate with the great archive of DS video games that preceded it. My 3DS XL sits proudly on the cabinets behind me, safe within the data that I’ll by no means promote it (nicely, until costs spike an terrible lot extra), a replica of Pokémon Extremely Moon within the cart slot as nature supposed. However it’s tempting!
