Heritage Auctions recently sold another rare copy of Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System for an exorbitant amount of money. $660,000, to be specific. This absolutely shatters the record for a single video game auction, which was previously held by a copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 that sold for $156,000 last November.
Much like the Super Mario Bros. that was bought for $114,000 last summer, this new copy is held in such high esteem due to its near-perfect, sealed condition and the cardboard hangtab perforation on its back. That little oddity indicates its status as part of a brief, fourth-wave production window, further increasing its rarity.
Like I mentioned when Kotaku reported on the $300,000 Charizard card earlier this week, however, we should be wary about celebrating these kinds of sales as video game fans.
While Super Mario Bros. is in no danger of being lost to the sands of time, putting these ridiculous price tags on classic games threatens our ability to archive rare games in the future by making their availability reliant on being able to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not only that, but there’s a chance these games, like classic art before them, are only being snatched up as a way to hide (or possibly even launder) liquid wealth in assets that can easily be used as tax write-offs.
In any case, it’s cool to see someone drop half a million dollars on a video game. It’s not like there’s anything else that’s worth spending money on these days.