Sealed copy of 'Super Mario Bros. 2' sells for $88,550 in estate sale
Sealed Copy of 'Super Mario Bros. 2' Sells for $88,550 in Estate Sale
By Patrik Repka
Q News
An auction house handling an estate sale for a recently deceased Indiana woman said a sealed copy of 1988 video game Super Mario Bros. 2 sold for a whopping $88,550.
Harritt Group Inc. said workers going through Patricia Martin's Floyd Knobs home to find items to list for the estate sale discovered a box of Nintendo Entertainment System games in the back of a walk-in-closet.
The $88,000 Find
"At first glance, it was a comforting wave of classic Nintendo nostalgia. All the classics were there, Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, Qix, and even a NES console." says Harritt Group, "So, we did what any children of the 1990s would do: we fired up the console and tested the open games. It was a great day".
"At a second glance, it was something else entirely. The seemingly ordinary collection included an extraordinary unopened copy of Super Mario Bros. 2".
The unopened copy of the Super Mario Bros. 2 game was assessed by Wata Games in Denver, which gave it a 9.8 A+ rating - the second highest score it could receive, the auction house said.
The game ended up selling for $88,550 to a Florida businessman.
The Expensive Price of Nostalgia
In July, a sealed copy of 1996 game Super Mario 64 set a world record in, when it was auctioned for $1.56 million.
An anonymous buyer paid the $1.56 million for a 25-year-old copy of Super Mario 64 in its original packaging, a record price for a video game, according to the auction house that sold it.
Heritage Auctions said that it received 16 bids leading up to and during the live auction on Sunday for the mainly pristine condition 3-D Super Mario game, which sold for about $60 when it was released in 1996 and was the best-selling game for the Nintendo 64 console.
Super Mario 64 is a 1996 platform game for the Nintendo 64 and the first Super Mario game to feature 3D gameplay. It was developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo. Super Mario 64 features 3-dimensional freedom of movement within a large open world based on 3D polygons.
Racing for Records
At the time, the price sent shock waves through gaming and collecting circles, even after a recent uptick in five- and six- figure sales of rare video games to investment-minded buyers.
The sale was announced just two days after Heritage Auctions said that an early production copy of The Legend of Zelda from 1987 had sold for $870,000 on July 9, 2021.
"Legend of Zelda" is a popular game that was first developed and released by Nintendo in 1986. It is a fantasy action-adventure video game franchise that was created by Takashi Tezuka and Shigeru Miyamoto, who are famous Japanese game designers.
The still-sealed rare version of the Nintendo game was not opened since it was purchased in 1987, and it was one of the units that were made on limited production for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Additional Stories
A Super Mario Bros. game sells for $2 million, another record for gaming collectibles.
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