A sealed, highly-rare copy of 'Super Mario Bros.' sold at an online auction this week for $114,000, or €100,000 - making it the most expensive videogame ever sold.
While just about everyone who had a NES back in the '80s and '90s had a copy of 'Super Mario Bros.', there were a number of very limited editions made for test markets and early, unsold versions. On the surface, these editions look absolutely no different - when you plug them in and play them - but the differences are more in their packaging.
A sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. just sold at auction for $114,000, which is a new record for the sale of a single game. Bet the owners of the $100,000 one, which is an earlier printing, feel great today. pic.twitter.com/lVdcla8d19
— Chris Kohler says PLAY LLAMASOFT! (@kobunheat) July 10, 2020
In this case, the reason for this particular copy's rarity comes from cardboard hang-tabs on the packaging that were only produced for a very short period of time in the game's production run, thus making it extremely rare. On top of that, the packaging itself is practically mint condition, meaning it looks almost exactly the same as it ran off the production line in 1985, some 35 years ago.
Rare videogames like this are becoming more and more valuable with each passing year. Only last year, a copy of the very same game was sold for $100,000. Just ten years ago, a copy of 'Stadium Events' on the NES sold for $41,000 at auction, then set as the most expensive videogame ever sold at auction. More recently, a prototype of the Sony PlayStation was up for auction with the bids reaching $350,000.
