It happened again.
Heritage Auctions has announced they’ve sold another classic NES game for six figures, which set a new record for the price paid for a single video game.
This time, the company sold a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 for $156,000, eclipsing the previous records set for an auction sale ($114,000 for a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. in July) and a private sale ($140,000 for a different sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. in August).
According to Heritage, this copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 fetched such a high price because of three reasons. Obviously, it’s factory sealed, which is very important to collectors. But it’s also graded (a 9.2 A+ on Wata Games’s scale) and it’s from a rare earlier printing that pushes the “Bros.” in the logo to the left side (normally it’s on the right between Mario’s hat and the rest of the logo).
$156,000 is quite a lot of money for one video game, but is a $200,000 sale next?