author: Conrad Hazi
Super Mario Bros. Copy Sold for $114 Thousand
Originally packaged copy of Super Mario Bros. was auctioned off for $114 thousand. This beats the record from a year ago, when the same title reached a price just over $100 thousand.
- The originally packaged cartridge with Super Mario Bros. was sold at auction for 114 thousand dollars.
- This is the highest price achieved by a video game in history.
Sealed cartridge with Super Mario Bros. was sold at auction for 114 thousand dollars. This is the highest price ever achieved by video game.
The 1985 cartridge was sold on Friday, July 10 at a public auction of old comics and art works by the Heritage Auctions house in Dallas, Texas. The price of the 35-year-old copy of the game was raised as much as 29 times, breaking an old record set by another copy of the same title in February 2019. Slightly more than a year earlier, the original Super Mario Bros. media was sold for $100,150.
What is so special about this copy?
The copy is one of the best-preserved Super Mario Bros. cartridges ever put up for auction. Its condition was evaluated by experts at 9.4 on a 10 point scale. The packaging also has an intact cardboard hangtab, which has further increased the value of the item.
"It was part of one of the short production runs of the game packaged in boxes with a cardboard hangtab underneath the plastic, an indication that it was part of one of the first variants produced after Nintendo started using shrink-wrap to seal the games rather than stickers," explains Heritage Auctions.
Not only this copy of Super Mario Bros. reached such a high price that day. Another gem - a prototype of the Sega Pluto console marked with the number 02 - was auctioned for 84 thousand dollars. Meanwhile, another NES game, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! reached the price of $50,400. These prices are impressive. Who knows, maybe it's worth a look in the basement or attic, because we might find such a gem?