You may have heard about the sealed copy of the original The Legend of Zelda that recently sold for over $3,000. If that price makes you do a double take, you better sit down for this one! At an auction for an incredibly rare, unopened copy of Super Mario Bros., the game sold for a record-setting $100,150.
Wata Games, a new company that specializes in grading sealed copies of vintage video games, deemed this copy of the NES classic especially hard to come by. There were originally a number of variants of the first games released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, explains the Wata Games website, with the “Black Box” copies being some of the very first boxes in the U.S.
Super Mario Bros. in particular had 11 variations of the game box released beginning in 1985, says Wata Games, with a sticker-sealed Black Box only available in Los Angeles and New York City to test the market.
This is one of those boxes.
“Not only are all of NES sticker sealed games extremely rare, but by their nature of not being sealed in shrink wrap they usually exhibit significant wear after more than 30 years,” Wata Games co-founder Kenneth Thrower said in a press release. “This game may be the condition census of all sticker sealed NES games known to exist.”
This copy of Super Mario Bros. was purchased at auction by three passionate collectors. If you’re looking to add exceedingly rare video games to your own budding collection, keep up with Wata Games and Heritage Auctions for even more pristine mementos of an era in gaming gone by.
Featured Image: Wata Games
