There’s something odd going on with graded video game auctions lately. We’ve seen how the prices have sky-rocketed to hundreds of thousands and even over a million and a half dollars for a sealed Super Mario Bros. game. Now it was Sonic’s turn, a graded game for Genesis has just sold for $430,500 in an auction.

This price even surprised Yuji Naka, one of Sonics’ creators, who in several Tweets expressed his disbelief for the cost of the game, saying things like: “What’s this?”, “Is it a scam?”, “That’s a scam, right? I wondered if it was time for Sonic to reach a high.”

The sold game had a grading of 9.4 done by WataGames, a company that has been criticized online in recent months due to the high prices that several games have reached through sales at Heritage Auctions. Experts in retro collectiong sales believe that these prices are over-bloated and that they will directly affect the prices of retro game sales in the future.