Dumpster-saved Donkey Kong art goes up for auction
The first public drawing of Mario was almost thrown away. It is now up for auction with an estimate of US$100,000 to US$150,000, according to Video Games Chronicle.
Former Nintendo advertising manager Donna Darbous is selling the artwork from her personal collection through auction house Landry Pop. The sale is titled Jumpman: The Beginning of an Icon. Bidding is scheduled to close on 28 October.
Darbous says she pulled the art from a dumpster when a Nintendo storage room was emptied. She took the envelopes home with permission from her boss. She found them again years later while clearing her garage. She kept them.
The piece is the original art for the Donkey Kong arcade flyer, the printed sheet sent to arcade operators to sell them a new cabinet. It was trade advertising, made for operators rather than players. It is made in two parts.
The first is a background image in ink and airbrush on cardstock board. The second is a clear acetate sheet that carries Jumpman, Donkey Kong, Pauline and barrels in ink and acrylic. Layering in this way let the characters sit cleanly over the backdrop for printing.
The artist was Leslie Cabarga. Landry Pop catalogues the painting as created in 1981 and commissioned by Nintendo for Donkey Kong promotional material. It is described as an acrylic-on-celluloid work. It is also described as the first public illustration of Mario, from when the character was still known as Jumpman.
The Jumpman sale contains 49 lots. Thirty-six come from Darbous. The balance is graded black-box NES games, early Nintendo Entertainment System releases sold in black packaging and assessed by collectors' grading services. In collecting, grading means an independent firm checks condition, seals the item and gives it a score.
Bidding on the Donkey Kong art had reached US$80,000 at the time of reporting on 15 October 2026, according to Video Games Chronicle.
The rest of the catalogue reaches across Nintendo's early history in the United States. Original artwork for the Mickey Mouse and Mickey & Donald Game & Watch handhelds, Nintendo's pocket LCD games, is valued at US$8,000 to US$12,000 each. Each unit played a single game on a small liquid-crystal display. The sale also includes original 1985 Nintendo of America Christmas card art, Super Mario Bros. production art, and employee jackets, shirts and commemorative gifts.
What makes this stand out is how close the centrepiece came to disappearing. A storage clear-out, a quick ask, and a later tidy-up kept fragile paper and film intact for more than four decades.
