Someone just paid $2 million for a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros.

[Shawn Knight]

What just happened? Records are meant to be broken, it seems. Less than a month after a copy of Super Mario 64 sold for $1.56 million to become the most expensive video game ever sold, the bar has been raised again.

Rob Petrozzo, a founding member of the collectibles site Rally, told The New York Times on Friday that an anonymous buyer has paid $2 million for a very rare copy of Super Mario Bros.

The copy in question had a rating of 9.8 from professional grading service Wata, which according to Rally’s listing, is the highest-graded example in existence.

Punks, X-Men, Declarations, and some news...

🏆A NEW WORLD RECORD on Rally🏆

...w/ the $2,000,000 sale of our 1985 Super Mario Bros., marking the HIGHEST PRICE EVER PAID for a video game of any title.

Read more in todays New York Times (cc: @nytimes): https://t.co/mJzEcVMXuQ pic.twitter.com/segsfw6Jw9

— Rally (@OnRallyRd) August 6, 2021

Rally operates a bit differently than traditional auction houses like Heritage Auctions. As The Times highlights, Rally purchases collectibles and invites people to invest in them as if they were an individual stock. When someone aims to buy one of their collectibles, Rally presents the offer to those invested in the product, who vote whether or not to sell it and cash out.

Rally paid $140,000 for this copy of Super Mario Bros. in April 2020 and offered up 3,000 shares at $50 each, for a market cap of $150,000.

As for what the future of video game collecting looks like, it's anyone's guess. Petrozzo believes we may witnessing the beginning of a new trend. "In my opinion, it hasn’t reached the masses," he said. "You’ll start to see a lot more people paying attention and doing research."

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/90703-someone-paid-2-million-sealed-copy-super-mario.html

 

[Puiu]

At this rate, that game will be worth 1 billion in just another 10-15 years.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Smells like money laundering. But then again we live in a crazy world where normal people buy handbags for $1000.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Absolutely disgusting. If I had that kind of money to spend, I'd be donating it to cancer research and helping to end hunger and homelessness instead of buying a FiretrUCKING NES game.

 

[captaincranky]

Absolutely disgusting. If I had that kind of money to spend, I'd be donating it to cancer research and helping to end hunger and homelessness instead of buying a FiretrUCKING NES game.

I'd hold out until I had few hundred million, and buy myself an F-16B (the two seater). Then hire a pilot, and tell him to hold the turns to under 3 Gs....

Then, if and when I caught my breath, I'd look down at Super Mario with calculated disdain.

 

[Austinturner]

I have no reason to suspect this, but imagine if you ran a collectible investment site and you had a few people buy a copy of mario for $150k, then a year later you used your funding to anonymously buy it for $2m and get lots of publicity.

More people would come to your site to invest in collectibles and then you would occasionally repeat the process whenever there was the opportunity to create huge marketing impact.

Of course that would be a ponzi scheme and very illegal.

 

[Geralt]

Absolutely ridiculous!

 

[Homerlovesbeer]

Absolutely sickening and vulgar display of wealth. 2 million dollars could help an aweful lot of people.

 

[Puiu]

Absolutely sickening and vulgar display of wealth. 2 million dollars could help an aweful lot of people.

But it could also net you a super cool game

 

[scavengerspc]

I wonder if that value extends to the game if it was a pack in with the system and was never opened.

 

[Bawlsdeep]

Absolutely sickening and vulgar display of wealth. 2 million dollars could help an aweful lot of people.

Do you really think people with money care about other people? Most got rich because of this mindset. There is exceptions obviously. Not many.

Super Mario Bros is an awesome game tho

 

[Avro Arrow]

I wonder if that value extends to the game if it was a pack in with the system and was never opened.

It might. It would also depend on how much the prospective purchaser valued the retail box and which system it was. I had an NES power set which had the light gun and power pad so my included cartridge had three games on it. Would a cartridge that also had Duck Hunt and World Class Track Meet included with Super Mario Bros be worth even more or even less? It all depends on what the potential buyer(s) look for.

 

[captaincranky]

I wonder if that value extends to the game if it was a pack in with the system and was never opened.

The only problem with this fiasco is, were the game ever to be opened, its value would immediately drop to about fifty cents.

So what the heck are you supposed to do with it? Other than perhaps pleasure yourself in front of the display case.

At a price of 2 million, that's enough, "self fulfillment",necessary to cause tennis elbow and carpal tunnel.syndrome, not to mention the possibility of retinitis pigmentosa.

 

[kenny loris]

This is just hilarious. I wonder what was the guy thinking when he bought it :/