If you have deep, deep pockets, then some of the world's rarest games are available to you in ways that they aren't for mere mortals. That's no more obvious than in the case of the latest most expensive game sale ever, where an original, in box copy of Super Mario Bros for NES, sold for a staggering $114,000.
Retro games have always garnered a lot of interest from collectors, just like comics, baseball cards, and anything else that was once more populous and is today almost impossible to find. In this case, it's doubly true, because this copy of Super Mario Bros from 1985 was rated as 9.4 near mint, getting as close to Gem Mint 10 for a copy of this game as we've ever seen.
When it went up for auction this past weekend, it garnered a lot of attention, but it was the eventual sale price which is the real take home from this event. Enough to pay off half of many people's mortgages.
A sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. just sold at auction for $114,000, which is a new record for the sale of a single game. Bet the owners of the $100,000 one, which is an earlier printing, feel great today. pic.twitter.com/lVdcla8d19
— Chris Kohler (@kobunheat) July 10, 2020
Another reason that this game reached such a high price is because it's a particularly rare version. You can tell, because it has "cardboard hangtabs" which were only part of the original test sale run of the game before Nintendo started using plastic.
The rarest of games I have is a decent-ish quality copy of Conker's Bad Fur Day. Probably worth around $100 at most. What's your rarest retro game?
Image source: HeritageAuctions