DISCOVERED JUST MONTHS AGO, THE PRIZED VIDEO GAME HAD BEEN UNTOUCHED FOR 40 YEARS
By Jesse Hughey | June 16, 2026
The highest-graded copy of the earliest sealed edition of Super Mario Bros., the iconic game whose popularity established Nintendo’s dominance in home console gaming in the 1980s, sold for $3 million in Heritage’s June 12–13 Video Games Signature® Auction, hammering the previous $2 million record set in a 2021 private sale.
Bearing the coveted gloss sticker adopted in early 1986, it is the earliest confirmed sealed copy of the most important game cartridge in history. It is one of only three known sealed copies from this second-production run — a variant that had never appeared in a public auction in sealed condition. Of the three known sealed copies, this is the finest, with a PSA 9.6 A++ grade.
This sealed copy of ‘Super Mario Bros.’ became the most expensive video game ever sold when it realized $3 million in Heritage’s June 12–13 Video Games Signature® Auction.
“It is only appropriate that the most significant video game in the world should bring the most impressive result in the history of the hobby,” says Evan Masingill, Heritage’s Consignment Director for Video Games. “The remarkable backstory — it was just discovered a few months ago inside a brand-new Control Deck NES console bundle, meaning it has not been touched for nearly 40 years — makes the result even more impressive.”
In 2019, Heritage Auctions became the first auction house to offer graded video games. Two years later, it sold a sealed copy of Super Mario 64 for $1.56 million and a sealed copy of The Legend of Zelda for $870,000, smashing auction price world records in its first standalone Video Games auction — a massively successful event that realized more than $8.47 million, soaring beyond pre-auction estimates.
A thumbnail history of Super Mario Bros. establishes the importance of the title to the Nintendo brand. Nintendo’s Family Computer, also known as the Famicom, launched in Japan in 1983, the year the home gaming console industry collapsed in North America. Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi believed high-quality software would drive hardware sales and established a new division tasked with creating a game strong enough to break through to North America. Expanding and brightening the world he had cocreated for the arcade games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Mario Bros., designer Shigeru Miyamoto created an intuitive and addictive horizontally scrolling adventure set to iconic music that sends Mario on a journey through eight distinct colorful worlds to rescue Princess Toadstool from Bowser, King of the Koopas.
The record-breaking copy of ‘Super Mario Bros.’ was recently discovered with this complete-in-box and unused NES Control Deck console.
When the Nintendo Entertainment System test-launched in select U.S. cities in October 1985 and then nationwide, Super Mario Bros. quickly became the defining game of the system whose instant popularity established it as the dominant U.S. console — and the title credited with an entire industry’s dramatic comeback.
Mario was the face of Nintendo and would go on to star in hundreds of titles and become one of the most recognized fictional characters in the world. The finest known example from the earliest confirmed sealed production, this record-breaking copy represents the moment Super Mario Bros. became the foundation of console gaming and a cornerstone of pop culture history.
