Call it a touch of nostalgia or even a desire to buy cheaper games, but various reports around the internet have noted that used Nintendo 3DS prices have begun to soar over the last week. First spotted before the end of 2025 on social media, New 3DS XL prices are resting between $200-350 on eBay despite the console having been officially discontinued in 2020. There hasn’t been any new development in homebrewing or hacking, which is leading many to believe it has to do with pricing increasing everywhere else.
For those totally out of the loop, the recent AI-boom at many tech companies has been wreaking havoc on nearly every industry, resulting in a DRAM shortage that is set to ravage 2026. We’ve already seen prices on the Xbox Series consoles and PlayStation 5 go up in the last year, but 2026 is set to kick off with GPU manufacturers AMD and Nvidia increasing prices on all of its hardware, while general PC prices are set to climb higher and higher. This is having a trickle-down effect of raising prices on items such as cellphones, to cars, to appliances as practically everything uses some form of computing nowadays.
That could explain why people are eager to grab a 3DS, which is relatively old hardware now and has a vast library of cheaper games. Buying something like Monster Hunter Generations on 3DS costs only $40 new, while getting Monster Hunter Wilds will set you back $70 on top of needing to get brand-new hardware that might jump up in price soon. If you jump into modding, that price can drop drastically as you’d only need to purchase the system.
Whatever the reason, if you’ve been looking at getting into the 3DS library, now is probably not the best time. Price bubbles like this crop up all the time, so it would be best to wait out the wave until prices stabilize themselves. I can’t see the 3DS returning to incredibly low prices, but $350 for a used 3DS is a little ridiculous when brand-new ones were only $170 at one point.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
