Crystal Relic 002 (Game Console)

A Game Boy turned to crystal

Crystal Relic 002 is a full-size copy of the original Nintendo Game Boy, cast in clear resin so that light passes straight through it. The detail is literal: the D-pad, the power switch, the GAME BOY lettering under the screen and the small print on the back are all reproduced. A matching translucent Super Mario Land cartridge slides into the back, with label art that mirrors the cover of Mario's first handheld game.

Arsham announced the piece on January 12, 2020, as the follow-up to Crystal Relic 001, and it went on sale on his website on January 17. The publisher, Arsham Editions, describes it as the second sculpture in the Crystal Relic series and the first Arsham edition made of two interlocking elements.

The edition was capped at 500. Each copy shipped in studio-designed housing with die-cut foam, a metal identification card, a sealing label and a pair of white art-handling gloves, and each carries a holographic label that records its number and verifies it as genuine. The publisher's archive page now lists it as sold out.

The artist who fossilizes the present

Daniel Lambert Arsham was born in Cleveland on September 8, 1980, and raised in Miami. He was 12 when Hurricane Andrew destroyed his childhood home, an event that has run through his work ever since. He won a full scholarship to the Cooper Union in New York and graduated in 2003.

Back in Miami he co-founded an artist-run space called The House, where he met the Paris dealer who began representing him by 2005. Soon after, the choreographer Merce Cunningham invited him to design sets, and in 2007 he co-founded the design and architecture studio Snarkitecture with Alex Mustonen.

His best-known body of work, Future Relics, imagines everyday objects of the late 20th century (cameras, cassette players, phones) as artifacts dug up centuries from now, cast in materials such as plaster, broken glass and quartz crystal. The Crystal Relic editions bring that idea into clear resin at a size and price meant for a wide audience.

January 2020: drops, Pokemon and Paris 3020

The release fell in a busy stretch. On January 11, 2020, the day before the Game Boy was announced, his Paris gallery opened his exhibition Paris 3020, in which he recast busts and friezes from classical antiquity as large crystallized sculptures. The same year he released Pokemon pieces and worked with Dior and Uniqlo.

Arsham sells his editions the way streetwear brands sell sneakers. He teases a piece on social media, unboxes it on Instagram, announces a release time and lets collectors rush his website. In 2018 his first edition of Hollow Figure sold out within three minutes at $950.

A January 2021 market survey found that 2020 was Arsham's biggest year yet at auction: sales that year accounted for more than half of all his auction appearances since 2008. A specialist quoted in it said young collectors identify with his recreations of objects from their 1980s and 1990s childhoods, naming the Game Boy and Pokemon editions in particular.

Within weeks of the release the world changed. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Arsham's market kept growing anyway: in June 2020 an online-only auction of his work in Hong Kong sold every lot, and 65 percent of its buyers were new to the house.

On the secondary market

With 500 copies in circulation, Crystal Relic 002 turns up regularly at auction and with resellers. On September 9, 2022, copy number 463, with its original packaging and metal identification card, was offered in an online sale of contemporary and emerging art in Los Angeles with an estimate of $1,500 to $2,000. It sold for $1,170.

A year later, on September 6, 2023, another copy was offered at auction in London with an estimate of £1,000 to £1,500 and hammered at £1,100 before the buyer's premium. That catalog gave no figure in dollars.

Galleries and resellers continue to offer it. A New York gallery shop listed the piece at $2,400.00 in October 2026. Because condition, the completeness of the box and the edition number all vary, each copy trades on its own terms.

How to identify one

A genuine copy is clear cast resin in two pieces: the console and a separate cartridge that slots into its back. The console stands about 6 inches tall and 3.5 inches wide; one auction listing measured it at 15 x 9 x 3 cm, about 5 3/4 x 3 1/2 x 1 1/4 inches. The publisher gives its weight as 1 lb.

The edition number appears on a holographic label. On the copy sold in 2022 the box label read 'An Official Arsham Studio Device 463/500 Arsham Editions LLC.' Collectors look for the original housing, the foam insert, the gloves and the metal identification card, all of which were part of the original package.

Listings are not always consistent. The publisher's archive table gives dimensions of 355.6 x 254 x 254 mm and a weight of 2.3 kg, figures that appear to describe the packaged object rather than the sculpture, and one London catalog printed the console's measurements with misplaced decimal points. Some online databases also misdate the work to 2002; it was made and released in 2020.

Why it matters

Nintendo released the Game Boy in Japan on April 21, 1989, and in North America on July 31, 1989, with Super Mario Land as one of its launch games. By its discontinuation in 2003, the Game Boy line and the Game Boy Color had sold 118.69 million units combined. Arsham picked one of the most familiar objects of a generation's childhood and froze it as an artifact.

Crystal Relic 002 sits at the accessible end of Arsham's market, far below his unique sculptures, and it is one of the works most often cited when collectors and specialists describe how he brought new buyers into contemporary art. It also set a template he has used since: a familiar consumer object, a tight edition, a timed online drop and a box designed to be kept.

The numbers

Medium

Cast resin, clear; console and cartridge as two interlocking parts

Dimensions

About 6 x 3.5 in; 15 x 9 x 3 cm (5 3/4 x 3 1/2 x 1 1/4 in) in one auction listing

Weight

1 lb, per the publisher

Edition size

500

Publisher

Arsham Editions, New York

Authentication

Holographic label with edition number; metal identification card in the box

Timeline

1. Sep 8, 1980

   Daniel Arsham is born in Cleveland, Ohio.

2. Apr 21, 1989

   Nintendo releases the Game Boy in Japan, with Super Mario Land among its launch titles.

3. Jul 31, 1989

   The Game Boy launches in North America.

4. 2003

   Arsham graduates from the Cooper Union. Nintendo discontinues the Game Boy line the same year.

5. 2005

   A Paris gallery begins representing Arsham.

6. 2007

   Arsham co-founds Snarkitecture with Alex Mustonen.

7. Jan 11, 2020

   Arsham's exhibition Paris 3020 opens at his Paris gallery.

8. Jan 12, 2020

   Arsham teases Crystal Relic 002, a clear resin Game Boy with a removable Super Mario Land cartridge, in an edition of 500.

9. Jan 17, 2020

   Crystal Relic 002 goes on sale on the artist's website.

10. Sep 9, 2022

    Copy 463/500 sells for $1,170 at auction in Los Angeles.

11. Sep 6, 2023

    Another copy hammers at £1,100 at auction in London.

12. Oct 2026

    A New York gallery shop lists a copy at $2,400.00.

The world in 2020

• Jan 3, 2020

  A U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport kills the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

• Jan 16, 2020

  The first impeachment trial of President Donald Trump begins in the U.S. Senate.

• Jan 23, 2020

  Wuhan, China, the center of the initial COVID-19 outbreak, is placed under quarantine.

• Jan 26, 2020

  Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others die in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California.

• Jan 31, 2020

  The United Kingdom formally leaves the European Union.

• Mar 11, 2020

  The World Health Organization declares COVID-19 a pandemic.

• Mar 16, 2020

  The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 2,997.10 points, the largest single-day point drop in its history.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Crystal Relic 002 (Game Console) is number 97 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (92 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The cartridge really comes out. Crystal Relic 002 was the first Arsham edition made of two interlocking parts.
• Each copy shipped with a pair of white art-handling gloves.
• The cartridge reproduces Super Mario Land, one of the Game Boy's four launch titles in Japan in 1989.
• Arsham was 12 when Hurricane Andrew destroyed his family's home in Miami, an event that has been a continuous theme in his work.
• In 2018 Arsham's first edition of Hollow Figure sold out on his website within three minutes.