A Sealed Copy of ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Just Sold for $3 Million USD — the Highest Price Ever Paid for a Video Game
Discovered inside an unopened NES console bundle after nearly 40 years, the PSA 9.6 A++ graded copy is one of only three known sealed examples from its second production run.
Summary
- A sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES sold for $3 million USD at Heritage Auctions on June 12, breaking the previous record of $2 million USD set in a 2021 private sale
- The copy carries a PSA 9.6 A++ grade, making it the highest-graded of the three known sealed copies from the second production run, identified by its gloss sticker adopted in early 1986
- The copy was discovered a few months ago inside a brand-new, unopened Control Deck NES console bundle, meaning it had not been touched for nearly 40 years
A sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES sold for $3 million USD at Heritage Auctions on June 12, setting a new record for the highest price ever paid for a video game at public auction. The sale surpasses the previous record of $2 million USD set in a 2021 private sale and was achieved during the first session of Heritage’s June 12 to 13 Video Games Signature Auction in Dallas, Texas.
The copy’s significance is built from several converging factors. It bears the gloss sticker that Nintendo adopted in early 1986, identifying it as the earliest confirmed sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. from the second production run — a variant that has never previously appeared in a public auction in sealed condition. Of the three known sealed copies from this run, this is the finest: a PSA 9.6 A++ grade against the other two, which carry a VGA 80 and a Wata 9.4 A++ respectively. A PSA 9.6 A++ on a 40-year-old sealed cartridge represents a near-perfect preservation grade, and the combination of rarity, variant significance and condition grade is what the $3 million USD figure reflects.
The provenance adds a dimension that grading alone cannot provide. The copy was discovered a few months ago inside a brand-new, unopened Control Deck NES console bundle, where it had remained untouched for nearly four decades. A sealed game found still inside its original retail bundle represents a different category of discovery from a loose cartridge in a collection — it suggests the console was purchased, stored and never opened, with the game inside it surviving in exactly the condition it left the factory. That chain of custody, from production to auction without interruption, is the rarest possible condition for a piece of this vintage.
“It is only appropriate that the most significant video game in the world should bring the more impressive result in the history of the hobby,” said Evan Masingill, Heritage’s Consignment Director for Video Games. “The remarkable back story — it was just discovered a few months ago inside a brand-new Control Deck NES console bundle, meaning it has not been touched for nearly 40 years — makes the result even more impressive.” Super Mario Bros. is the game whose commercial success established Nintendo’s dominance in home console gaming in the 1980s, effectively rescuing a video game industry that had collapsed under the weight of the 1983 market crash. Its cultural weight as a collectible object is inseparable from that history.
