The extra $150 covered the seller’s expenses.” “So we all talked about it and decided to buy it together. “The owner said he would not listen to an offer that was less than $100,000,” said Jim Halperin, owner of Heritage Auctions and one of three buyers who ended up purchasing a share in the game. Once Wata Games’ grading process was complete, word quickly spread among the community that the game might be available for purchase for the right price. had been previously graded by another company, Kahn says the owner sent it to Wata for re-evaluation in part because “we actually recognize on the label what variant it is, while the old one hadn't in any way (or not prominently enough).” That’s important because a mint-condition copy of the 11th printing of Super Mario Bros. “Sometimes a grandmother might buy a game for Christmas and then pass away,” Kahn said of previous high-quality gaming finds. A collection of 2,200 sealed NES, SNES, and Genesis games was recently uncovered from two Indiana video rental stores that had suddenly shut down, leaving their stock sitting undisturbed on the shelves for years. Usually this kind of top-quality find only occurs by happenstance. There’s not much information available on how the seller came into possession of the game or how it remained in such good condition for decades despite having no protection from shrink wrap. People know where it came from because the community is not massive.” Advertisement A lot of collectors at that level know about the game. “In the sealed collector market that was one of his holy grails. “You couldn’t be a high-level collector without knowing ,” Kahn said. While Kahn said that seller wished to keep his identity private, he’s “one of the largest collectors of sealed video games” and is well-known in the tight-knit community of top-level game collectors. about six years ago through direct contact with the person who eventually sold it. Kahn said he first heard of this one-of-a-kind, sealed test-market Super Mario Bros. "This game may be the condition census of all sticker sealed NES games known to exist," Thrower said. usually exhibit significant wear after more than 30 years." Wata Games gave the unopened box a 9.4 rating on its ten-point rating scale and gave the sticker seal its highest rating of A++. Not only that, but Wata Games' chief grader Kenneth Thrower said in a statement that this box is in a "supreme state of preservation. I haven't seen proof of it.”Ĭlose-up examples of the sticker seal that only appeared on games sold during the NES' test market launch, which did not have shrink wrap. is so rare that Kahn told Ars that it's “the only known copy of arguably the most important game in Nintendo history… It’s rumored that there is one more out there, but it's just hearsay. Finding one with the sticker seal intact is even rarer Kahn estimates only a few dozen exist across the whole test-market line.īut finding an unopened test-market Super Mario Bros. That makes finding even an opened box decades later rare enough. box variants released between 19).ĭeniz Kahn-CEO and cofounder of game-grading service Wata Games, which evaluated this specimen-estimates that only 2,000 to 10,000 copies of each of the 27 test market games were ever made in this sticker-sealed style. These copies didn't come in the usual shrink wrap but were instead sealed with a small matte or glossy sticker ( this handy guide outlines the many different Super Mario Bros. The box in question comes from Nintendo's extremely limited "test market launch" for the NES in New York City and Los Angeles starting in late 1985 ( no one actually knows the exact date). for the NES has sold for $100,150, setting a new record for the video game-collecting market and perhaps ushering in a new era for the valuation of gaming rarities.īefore you go searching to see if that old cartridge in your attic might be your gateway to riches, note that this copy of the game is so valuable primarily because it’s one of the earliest known copies of the game, and in near-perfect condition.