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Super Mario Bros. is an all-time classic, but it isn’t generally regarded as a hot collector’s item. After all, this was a title that came bundled with the NES for most consumers in North America. With that said, Super Mario Bros. did get released separately at one point. Copies of this edition of the game are exceedingly rare. So much so that one mint-condition sealed copy was recently sold at auction for an astounding $30,100.44.
As reported by Kotaku, the copy was sold by a Pennsylvania-based retro game dealer called DKOldies. CEO Drew Steimel apparently had Super Mario Bros. and some other mint-condition games just sitting in his office for years. Steimel says that he wishes he knew how he got his hands on this item.
The copy was sold for such a high price for a number of reasons. Beyond being shrink-wrapped, this copy of Super Mario Bros. is inside of a hangtab-style box. Most Nintendo games sold came inside of big boxes, but this one came in a sleek “hangtab”-style box. Because it has a perforated tab on the back, this game could be hung on pegs in stores. According to a collector over on the NintendoAge forums, there are probably only a dozen examples of copies like this. That’s pretty damn incredible!
Retro game collectors do not mess around. Last week, a sealed copy of the super-rare Stadium Events was sold for $41,997 to a private collector. Unlike Super Mario Bros., only 200 copies of this game were ever released in North America. Even a loose copy with no box can sell for as much as $10,000. There’s little doubt that as the years go by, the price of these insanely rare games will only continue to rise. Future collectors may look back at the (comparatively low) prices current collectors had to pay and chuckle with amusement.
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