I woke up the other day and realized my PlayStation Now subscription was about to lapse. I use it, sure, but I also have PlayStation Plus, another $9.99 monthly fee, so I occasionally duck out of the former for a few months at a time. While a combined $20 monthly charge isn’t a deal-breaking proposition, when you don’t rein in your subscriptions (Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Xbox Game Pass, etc.), you suddenly have twelve active and you’re paying $150 per month for more content than you could possibly consume.
I felt responsible when I decided to save the $9.99. Such a small sum of money doesn’t matter a lot, but it does register on budgets like mine. Then, a pristine, sealed copy of the original Super Mario Bros. sold for $2 million at auction, becoming the most expensive video game ever sold, and I felt like a loser. A responsible loser. But a loser. I will just save my $9.99 for 200,000 months and I’ll be ready to buy!
Given the nature of the industry, these records have a tendency to change often (which you will see below). In about a year’s time, we have seen the title for Most Expensive Game Ever Sold change hands five times, though it’s almost always Mario absconding with the hardware in some form or another. While it does seem plausible that a pristine copy of the original Mario title, which garnered a whopping “9.8 A+ rating” on the Wata Scale, might be as valuable a game as there ever will be, it is probably a bit foolhardy to think no one will ever pay more. There’s always a bigger fish.
But how did we get to such a ridiculous number so quickly?
July 2020: A different copy of Super Mario Bros. sells for $114,000
The explosion started when a different copy of Super Mario Bros. showed up at auction sporting a 9.4 A+ Wata rating, and ultimately selling for $114,000, eclipsing still another copy of Super Mario Bros. that sold in February 2019. Sure, it’s mint condition. Sure, it’s sealed. But why was this copy so valuable? Oh, don’t worry, it’s for a very important reason.
It had cardboard hangtabs!
Heritage Auctions explained the significance of such tabs:
Cardboard hangtabs were originally used on the US test market copies of black box games, back before plastic was used to seal each game...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...produced within that time frame had a production period of just a few months.
So, by all means, pay $114,000.
November 2020: Super Mario Bros. 3 sells for a then-record $156,000 because of Mario’s hand
A few months later, Mario was at it again. This time it was a copy of Super Mario Bros. 3. The game sported a 9.2 A+ on the Wata scale (which outpaced the then-highest rating for a Mario 3 cartridge -- 9.0 A) and sold for $156,000. Not only did this specific product sport a higher rating, it featured a short-lived box design that saw Mario’s hand obstructed by the word “Bros.” in the title text. Later editions would move the text to remove the obstruction. Heritage Auctions says that “Collectors have spent years looking for such a version — the earliest in the Super Mario Bros. 3 production history – and usually come up empty-handed.”
The $156,000 price would go on to hold the record until another copy of the original Super Mario Bros. exploded with a price of $660,000 in April 2021. You know the drill by now as to why: 9.6 A+ Wata rating, super short production window, more cardboard tabs. Blah, blah, blah.
July 9, 2021: The Legend of Zelda sells for $870,000
For two days (the epic run of July 9-10, 2021), The Legend of Zelda held bragging rights over its plumber competitors, after an original NES copy sold for $870,000. What got this particular copy of Zelda into such a stratosphere?
First, it was obviously a sealed copy. It was also deemed “incredibly rare” and held an “early production” status. This particular production “variant” was limited to only 1987, and was later replaced by the “Rev-A” version after the game’s popularity required a boost in production capabilities. Heritage Auctions described it as the “apotheosis of rarity.” Nothing like a fancy word to get people to pay more for something. For comparison, a lame “Rev-A” version sold for $50,400 back in 2020.
Never forget that for two days, The Legend of Zelda dunked on the gaming universe. But to quote Princess Zelda herself, “The flow of time is always cruel…,” and on the third day, like a resurrected gaming messiah, Mario rose again...
July 11, 2021: Super Mario 64 sells for $1.56 million
Less than a month before the Super Mario Bros. $2 million, record-setting auction, the medal for Most Expensive Game Ever Sold went to Super Mario 64. Also at auction—maybe that’s implied, as it seems unlikely someone would walk into a used game store and whip out $1.5 million in cash—Super Mario 64 sold for $1.56 million to an anonymous buyer. The first three-dimensional Mario world, Super Mario 64 went on to sell 11.9 million copies, and is the best-selling Nintendo 64 game of all-time—the nearest competition is Mario Kart 64 at 9.8 million. Not bad for a plumber trying to make a living.
August 6, 2021: Super Mario Bros. sells for $2 million
After buying the game for a “bargain price” of $140,000, Rally—a company that buys collectibles, and then sells “shares” of those collectibles to investors, who then receive a portion of the profits upon resale—turned down a $300,000 offer before heading off to auction and getting a cool $2 million. We can debate the merits of this process at another time, but still, someone had to buy it. And someone (anonymously) did. And because someone did, Super Mario Bros. is now, for the third time, the Most Expensive Video Game Ever Sold.
Inflation alone almost guarantees someone, somewhere will pay more than $2 million for a game someday. Who knows, maybe someone will pay more than $2 million for this same copy of Super Mario Bros. someday, should the anonymous buyer choose to sell. But given the sorts of factors that go into determining these prices, it’s impossible to gauge what direction the market may take.
Nintendo World Championships 1990: “The Most Expensive Attainable Game”
So, you would like to add a truly rare piece to your gaming collection, but lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so? You have hope, young padawan.
When it comes to collectibles, as the above has shown, the smallest idiosyncrasies are what determine value. However, rarity isn’t always among them. Yes, each of these products are rare in terms of their condition, box art, and production window, but the games themselves are anything but. There are currently more than 40 million copies of Super Mario Bros. floating around. However, that isn’t the case for certain cartridges like the Nintendo World Championships 1990—a prize for the winners of that year’s tournament containing, ironically, Super Mario Bros., as well as Tetris, and Rad Racer, in a blended format built for competition. Additional copies were granted to Nintendo Power consumers.
A copy of that cartridge turned up in Seattle back in 2019. While the exact number of cartridges thought to be made has varied over the years, a number that started out as low as 90 cartridges (64 grey, 26 gold), has ballooned to the hundreds, with the highest product number reportedly being #348. Despite that increase, only around 75 copies are known to be in existence.
So, 75 copies versus 40 million. The version of the Nintendo World Championships 1990, said to be among the rarest cartridges in the world in regards to the game itself, the “Holy Grail” of rare Nintendo games, sold for the unbelievable sum of... $13,000. Though it was shown to be in rough condition, even the better-conditioned versions of the grey cartridges “only” sell for between $15,000 and $20,000.
Except that according to that same auction chart, one recently sold for $180,000 with an 8.0 Wata rating—the first cartridge offered, according to Heritage Auctions, to have a Wata rating higher than 5.5. A gold cartridge reportedly sold for $100,000 on eBay back in 2014. The volatility is astounding. And despite all of this, you’ll notice Mario still found a way to grab a piece of the pie. The guy just can’t help himself.
And here I thought the $150 Super Nintendo copy of Chrono Trigger I wanted to buy was a lot. I would only have to stop PlayStation Now for 15 months to pay for that. That’s a net savings of 199,985 months. I’d rather have Chrono Trigger anyway.