Unopened Super Mario game from 1986 sells for over $600,000 at auction

An unopened copy of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros from 1986 was recently put for auction where it sold for a whopping amount of $660,000. According to Dallas based Heritage Auctions, which put it under hammer earlier this week, the game was bought as a Christmas gift and was forgotten thereafter. However, it resurfaced in the public eye a few weeks ago after being discovered in a drawer, packed and sealed in plastic. 

'Finest plastic sealed copy' 

Additionally, the auction house claimed that it was the finest copy of the platform game series to have ever been put under the hammer. Only once had a similar 1987 unopened copy been sold before, that too far below its price at $114,000.  “Since the production window for this copy and others like it was so short, finding another copy from this same production run in similar condition would be akin to looking for a single drop of water in an ocean,” Valarie McLeckie, Heritage’s video game specialist told AP. 

_{Credits: AP}

"Not only is this the finest plastic-sealed copy with a perforated cardboard hangtab we've ever offered of any black box title, it is also the oldest sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. we've ever had the opportunity to offer. This is only the fourth version of Super Mario Bros. ever produced, and its window of production was remarkably short. Just to paint a better picture of how short this really was -- the nationwide release for the console came in mid to late 1986, and black box games distributed for that release did not have the "Game Pak NES-GP" code. It's worth mentioning that Nintendo managed to add the trademark symbol to the Nintendo Entertainment System on their game boxes by the beginning of 1987," the auction house wrote on its website.

Super Mario is a platform game series created by Nintendo, featuring their mascot, Mario. Alternatively called the Super Mario Bros. series or simply the Mario series, it is the central series of the greater Mario franchise. A day commemorating Mario's birthday is also celebrated on March 10 every year. 

Image Credits: AP/Pixabay