A second production sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES, called “the most important video game ever offered at auction”, sold Friday for 3 million dollars. The game has sat untouched in a box with a launch edition NES Control Deck console — in the original packaging with the plastic still intact — for 40 years, according to Heritage Auctions. What makes this particular copy so special is that it sports an unbroken glossy sticker seal, which was introduced in 1986 for a brief period before Nintendo switched to shrink-wrapping its games.
According to the auction house, only three second production copies in glossy sticker format are known, and this one is the best of them, rated PSA 9.6 A++. “This specific variant has never appeared at a public auction in sealed condition, underscoring how elusive it is,” according to the Heritage Auctions listing.
Heritage auctions
Because these games were not protected by plastic, it is rare to find a copy in such good condition decades after its release. The game and the console it came with date from the Los Angeles test market era, early in Nintendo’s expansion in the United States. “In many ways,” the auction house wrote, “this represents the closest a collector can come to ownership to the very moment when Super Mario Bros. transformed console video games from a struggling novelty to a permanent part of cultural history.”
