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It turns out that sealed copies of old classic video games have become the new Action Comics #1 and Amazing Fantasy #15 of the collectors world. To further emphasize that point, a sealed first run copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 for NES has sold for $156,000 at Heritage Auctions, an absolutely wild amount of money.
What makes this first run of Super Mario Bros. 3 especially noteworthy from a collecting perspective is apparently just the placement of the logo. “Bros.” appears flush along the left side of the box on this version, but its placement was changed in subsequent runs so that it was not covering Mario’s glove. (It really does look better the new way.) Heritage Auctions claims it is not terrifically easy to find this version of the game, let alone a sealed copy with a WATA 9.2 A+ grading.
This first run of Super Mario Bros. 3 gained 20 bidders on its road to $156,000, and the auction had opened with a starting bid of $62,500. It’s pretty impressive that this auction earned so much, whereas a prototype copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 sold for “only” $31,200 back in September. In any case, this is far from the most expensive piece of gaming memorabilia we’ve covered involving Heritage Auctions: The Nintendo Play Station sold for $360,000 back in March.
