Stop whatever you’re doing. Pay attention. What I’m about to tell you is what they call “service journalism.” Text your mom the following: “Hey, Mom — do we still have that box of old Nintendo games in the basement closet from when I was a kid?” Hopefully she didn’t sell them at a yard sale while you were in college and hopefully it contains a an original of Super Mario Bros from 1985, still in the box.
A video game trader with the handle DKOldies just sold a copy of Super Mario Bros for $30,000. It’s in a sealed box with mint-condition packaging:
Mashable notes that usually the game sells for $10-15 on eBay. Apparently it was super rare because of a nuance in the packaging, causing it’s price to skyrocket amongst gaming collectors in the final seconds of the auction. via Mashable:
So what made this one so valuable? Steimel said some knowledgeable collectors at the NintendoAge forum had the answer.
“They said the reason that game went for so much was because Mario was always sold in the system,” Steimel said. “You bought it with the system, it came in the box. This particular copy was from before that happened, before Nintendo decided to bundle them. They only did it for a short time.”
You can tell it’s a super-rare, super-early copy of Super Mario Bros. because of the hangtag on the back of the box, meaning it was meant to be sold on store racks, not bundled in with the NES.
Get to those closets, folks. You might have a gold mine in there that you don’t know about.
