Rare Super Mario Bros. Copy Breaks Auction Record at $3M

Heritage Auctions confirmed on June 12, 2026, that a PSA 9.6 A++ sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for $3M. It nearly doubles the $1.5M paid that same year for a sealed copy of Super Mario 64, which had stood as one of the most expensive video game collectibles ever sold.

What makes this particular copy remarkable is a PSA 9.6 A++ grading, which is about as close to perfect as a 40-year-old sealed game gets. Heritage identifies this as the earliest confirmed sealed copy from Super Mario Bros.'s second production run, distinguishable by a specific gloss sticker used on releases from early 1986. The copy was discovered only a few months ago, still sealed inside a brand-new NES Control Deck console bundle, meaning it had sat untouched since 1986.

Only Three Such Copies of Super Mario Bros. Exist

Only three sealed copies from this exact second production run are known to exist. The other two carry slightly lower grades, a VGA 80 and a Wata 9.4 A++, and crucially, neither has ever gone to public auction. This $3M sale of Super Mario Bros. marks the first time any copy from this batch has been sold publicly, which means there was no prior sale price to anchor expectations against. The market essentially had to decide what the rarest known surviving copy of one of the most culturally significant video games ever made was worth.

The buyer also received a bonus of a launch-edition NES Control Deck console, still sealed with the same console hardware bundle the game had been packaged with since 1986. Heritage was careful to note this is a comparatively small addition next to the headline price, though an unopened launch NES on its own would likely fetch a healthy sum in any other auction.

High-grade sealed copies of foundational Nintendo titles are increasingly being treated less like games and more like rare historical artifacts. They are comparable to first-edition books or significant pieces of memorabilia.