A sealed and graded copy of Super Mario Bros. has appeared on auction at Heritage and is already at an insane $310,000. With seven days left to bid, the item is poised to smash the previous record for the most expensive game collectible ever. The copy of Super Mario Bros. was designated by Wata, an authoritative grading company, at a pristine 9.6.
Just last year on Heritage, a 9.4 "3-code" hang tab version of Super Mario Bros. sold for $114,000 at auction. Before plastic sealing was common, cardboard hang tabs were used on the U.S test market versions of games, meaning that a hang tab denotes an older copy of a given game. For Super Mario Bros., four sub-variants exist within the cardboard hang tab versions, one of them being the "3-code" variant. The Super Mario Bros. copy that is currently on auction for $310,000 is an even older "1-code" version that is only the fourth version of Super Mario Bros. ever produced.
If the current auction were to be pushed above $360,000, this version of Super Mario Bros. could eclipse a PlayStation prototype as the highest-priced game collectible. It's difficult to predict an exact price for this copy since it's the oldest version ever available on Heritage. Bidders could be potentially battling it out for a piece of gaming history with an older copy than the "1-code" becoming less and less likely to appear.
The exact age of this copy is difficult to discern. Due to the fact that this Super Mario Bros. copy lacks the trademark logo next to the "Nintendo Entertainment System" text on the cover places it before the beginning of 1987, but the inclusion of a Game Pak NES-GP code makes it at least older than mid-1986. This copy is likely either very late 1986 or very early 1987. Either way, the window for production of such a copy is extremely narrow.
This auction comes at a time when Mario products are already a hot topic. After fans learned that Nintendo was delisting Super Mario 3D All-Stars, the game hit eBay for absurdly marked-up prices with copies fetching up to $200 and beyond.
While the Mario games for the NES are certainly not the oldest games available, the nostalgia of bidders, as well as the longevity of the series, has consistently put these games at the top of the record books. The previous record for the most expensive sealed game—not to be confused with the aforementioned game collectible record—was held by Super Mario Bros. 3 until this copy came along. The Mario games' ridiculous performances at auction are only further testament to the franchise's place in gamer's hearts.