Heritage Auctions announced that a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. was sold last week for $114,000, setting a new record for the sale price of a single game. The previous recordholder was a different mint condition copy of Mario’s first NES adventure, which sold for $100,150 in a private sale in early 2019.
So what makes this copy of Super Mario Bros. so valuable? According to the auction house, it comes down to the packaging’s 9.4 A+ grade from Wata Games and an equally rare “cardboard hangtab” (similar to those found on action figures) that was perforated onto the box by Nintendo:
What’s the deal with cardboard hangtabs? one may, understandably, wonder. Cardboard hangtabs were originally used on the US test market copies of black box games, back before plastic was used to seal each game. As Nintendo began to further establish their company in the US, their packaging was updated almost continuously. Strangely, the addition of the plastic wrap came before the box cutting die was altered to remove the cardboard hangtab. This rendered the functionality of the cardboard hangtab completely useless, since it was under the plastic seal. There are four sub-variants of the plastic sealed cardboard hangtab box (this particular copy of Super Mario Bros. being the “3 Code” variant) that were produced within the span of one year. Each sub-variant of the cardboard hangtab black box, produced within that timeframe, had a production period of just a few months; a drop in the bucket compared to the title’s overall production run.
In short, a cardboard hangtab copy of any early Nintendo Entertainment System game brings a certain air of “vintage” unrivaled by its successors.
Valarie McLeckie, the Video Game Specialist at Heritage Auctions, later told Ars Technica that this particular variant of Super Mario Bros. is believed to exist “in the single digits” today.
While this rare copy of Super Mario Bros. is sought-after by collectors for its uniqueness, fans interested in playing the game have several cheaper options. In addition to the millions of open copies of the NES original that exist in the wild, Super Mario Bros. has been re-released on the Super NES (as part of Super Mario All-Stars), Game Boy Color (as Super Mario Bros. Deluxe), Game Boy Advance, 3DS, Wii, Wii U, and the NES Classic. Super Mario Bros. is also part of the Nintendo Entertainment System compilation on the Nintendo Switch, which is a free download for all subscribers to the Nintendo Switch Online service.