Sealed Copy of Super Mario Bros Sold in Dallas for Record-Breaking $660,000

Check every drawer and cabinet, because something you squirreled away decades ago could net you a small fortune.

A sealed copy of the original Super Mario Bros just sold at a Dallas auction house for $660,000.

Heritage Auctions describes the NES cartridge as "[t]he finest known copy of the oldest sealed hangtab Super Mario Bros" and "the finest copy known to have been professionally graded for auction".

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The game was given a WATA grade of 9.6 A+, meaning it's pretty much in perfect condition. If you were to play it on an old Nintendo that's been kept in good shape, you wouldn't even have to blow in it!

I seriously doubt the buyer is ever going to open it, though. Why would you after spending more money on it than most people spend on a house?

If this story seems familiar, it's because another sealed copy of the 1985 Nintendo classic that changed video games forever sold at the same auction house in July of 2020 for $114,000.

According to Heritage Auctions, the cartridge that sold Friday, March 26, 2021 was bought as a Christmas gift in 1986, but was tucked away in a desk drawer and forgotten about for 35 years before being discovered earlier this year.

This particular cartridge was manufactured in 1986 and is still in the shrink wrap. It's what collectors would call a "black box cartridge", which were some of the earliest games produced for the NES console. Unopened copies are highly sought after by retro gaming nerds.

"Since the production window for this copy and others like it was so short, finding another copy from this same production run in similar condition would be akin to looking for single drop of water in an ocean," Heritage Auctions Video Games Director Valarie McLeckie said. "Never say never, but there's a good chance it can't be done."

I had so many Nintendo cartridges as a kid, but they were all either lost, stolen, or sold. I think about those games and the Ninja Turtles, Transformers, and He-Man toys I carelessly discarded as a kid that would probably sell for a good chunk of change these days. D'oh!

Ah well. At least those games and toys were played with and loved. There's value in that too.