A sealed Super Mario Bros. cartridge from a 1986 NES bundle sells for $3 million at auction

A sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System just sold for $3 million at Heritage Auctions, which called it the "finest known copy" and "the Holy Grail of video game collecting." The previous record was a $2 million private sale in 2021 for another copy of the same game.

The copy was discovered only a few months ago, still sealed inside a brand-new NES Control Deck console bundle that had sat completely untouched since 1986. The console and game hail from the Los Angeles test-market period, one of Nintendo's earliest US expansion efforts, and the bundle had never been opened.

The cartridge itself is from Super Mario Bros. ' second production run, released in early 1986, with a distinctive gloss sticker seal that replaced the short-lived matte sticker used on the original 1985 launch copies. According to Heritage Auctions, only three sealed second-production copies with this gloss sticker format are known to exist, and this one carries the highest PSA 9.6 A++ grade. It also bears a cardboard hang tab that was discontinued in 1987. That means it is in near mint condition. The other two known examples are graded at VGA 80 and Wata 9.4 A++.

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"The remarkable backstory, 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," said Evan Masingill, a Consignment Director at Heritage Auctions.

With that said, high-grade sealed copies of retro video games are now viewed less as entertainment and more as rare historical artifacts. To put the auction price in perspective, the original NES bundle retailed for $149.99 in 1985, which, adjusted for inflation, is roughly $450 today. Considering how many of these systems were opened and used, it's something of a miracle that this $3 million example remained untouched for so long.