Sealed ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Sells At Auction For Record Price

Anything from the 80s is hot right now. Well, maybe not leg warmers and shoulder pads, but just about everything else is.

In the world of video games, Nintendo ruled the 80s. Yes, there was the Atari 2600, but that was hot for only a couple of years, peaking around 1983. Shortly after that, the original NES hit the scene with better graphics and better games.  It didn't take long for millions of 80s kids like me to throw that 2600 in the closet, never to be powered up again.

So it makes sense then that a game from the NES has set the record for the highest price ever paid for a video game. At a Heritage Auctions' Comics and Comic Art event on July 10, a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. from 1985 sold for a record bid of $114,000.

Geesh, if I had known that the Super Mario game I spent way too many hours of my life trying to save the Mushroom Princess would have been able to set me up for early retirement, I would have bought every one I could and stored them away in a cryogenic safe.

Wait though, not every Mario Bros. game from that time would have sold for this much. So much for those early retirement plans.

As Heritage Auctions explains, it was the rare packaging that made this particular game sell for a record price. Early copies of the game used a cardboard hang-tab underneath the plastic.

Heritage says, "the addition of the plastic wrap came before the box cutting die was altered to remove the cardboard hang-tab. This rendered the functionality of the cardboard hang-tab completely useless since it was under the plastic seal."

Other vintage video games that sold at this auction for more than the value of my car, include sealed copies of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Contra, Duck Hunt, Gyromite, and Super Mario Bros. 3.

Excuse me while I fire up my DeLorean time machine and head back to 1985 to find these games.