Sealed Super Mario Bros. Sells for $3 Million, Shattering Record

On June 12th, Heritage Auctions sold a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for $3 million. The platformer is not especially rare—many original NES owners remember it as a pack-in—but this copy’s value came from a small gloss sticker that keeps the paper box closed.

Heritage highlights the intact "coveted gloss sticker seal" and a high 9.6 rating from the Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), suggesting the cartridge comes from a 1985 second-production run before the switch to standardized shrink-wrap. Heritage says only three sealed copies from that run are known, and that this is the earliest.

The lot included a boxed NES, though it did not include Duck Hunt. At $3 million, the sale sets a new record for a single video game, surpassing the notorious Nintendo PlayStation and echoing the $1.5 million Super Mario 64 sale in 2021. Collectors argue familiarity drives these headline prices: big names like Mario and Pikachu attract deeper pockets than rarer cartridges.

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