As video games continue to grow, so too does he history behind them. And the older and more popular the medium of video games becomes, so will the value of classic gems. The original Super Mario Bros. retailed for around $25 (when it wasn't packed-in with the NES), but if someone held on to a copy of that game from 1985 without opening it, it could be worth much more now, as we found out last year. But a recent auction has set an even higher record for classic video game auctions.
Classic video games show up on eBay all the time, and sometimes those listings can be incredibly cool, like this poster for the Super Mario Bros. movie which was signed by two of the games creators, Shigeru Myamoto and Takashi Tezuka. But sometimes these auctions are so high profile, they are held through the international auction house known as Heritage Auctions, like the one-of-a-kind Nintendo PlayStation prototype.
One such auction took place recently. As caught by Kotaku writer Chris Koehler, a sealed test market copy of the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES sold for an incredible $114,000. This beats the previous single retro game record of last year’s sale of another early test market copy of Super Mario Bros. by $14,000. If someone is wondering what makes this version worth $14,000 more than the other, the answer lies in the hangtab.
Back in 1985, when Nintendo was doing test market runs in New York and L.A., the company tried several different styles of packaging the games on store shelves. For only a short period of time during that year or so, Nintendo manufactured the game with a cardboard tab to hang it on hooks in stores. Not only was Nintendo rather quick to nix that idea, this particular copy is one of four sub-variants of the game with a hangtab made “useless” by the plastic seal, as heritage Auctions explains:
“What's the deal with cardboard hangtabs? one may, understandably, wonder. Cardboard hangtabs were originally used on the U.S. test market copies of black box games, back before plastic was used to seal each game. As Nintendo began to further establish their company in the U.S., their packaging was updated almost continuously. Strangely, the addition of the plastic wrap came before the box cutting die was altered to remove the cardboard hangtab. This rendered the functionality of the cardboard hangtab completely useless, since it was under the plastic seal. There are four sub-variants of the plastic sealed cardboard hangtab box (this particular copy of Super Mario Bros. being the "3 Code" variant) that were produced within the span of one year. Each sub-variant of the cardboard hangtab black box, produced within that timeframe, had a production period of just a few months; a drop in the bucket compared to the title's overall production run. In short, a cardboard hangtab copy of any early Nintendo Entertainment System game brings a certain air of "vintage" unrivaled by its successors.”
The price of rare games from the NES-era has been on an upward trajectory for some time now. Only three years ago, the incredibly rare game Stadium Events sold for $42,000, a measly sum in comparison to this new Super Mario Bros. auction. Experts predict that prices will only grow more outrageous from here, so anyone who thinks they might have a gem like this left in their parent’s attic should begin hunting.
Super Mario Bros. is available on most Nintendo consoles, including the Switch via Nintendo Switch Online.
Source: Heritage Auctions