Video games are getting pretty expensive, aren't they? Current system generation games are running about $60 a piece now, and you still have to get the in-game purchases to make it worth while. Would you pay $114,000 for a game, though?

A copy of Super Mario Bros, released in 1985 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, sold for $114,000 at Heritage Auction's website.

The price sets a new record for the highest price paid for a video game, which was recently set at $100,000 for the same game. To put it in easier-to-understand terms, you could buy about 440 Nintendo Switch consoles.

This copy of the game has never been out of the box. It was professionally graded by "experts" as 9.4/10, meaning the box is even in near perfect shape. It looks like it did when it was pulled off the shelf in 1985.

What brought the value up on this (other than being in mint condition), is simply hang tabs on the box. Heritage Auctions explains:

What's the deal with cardboard hangtabs? one may, understandably, wonder. Cardboard hangtabs were originally used on the U.S. test market copies of black box games, back before plastic was used to seal each game. As Nintendo began to further establish their company in the U.S., their packaging was updated almost continuously. Strangely, the addition of the plastic wrap came before the box cutting die was altered to remove the cardboard hangtab. This rendered the functionality of the cardboard hangtab completely useless, since it was under the plastic seal. There are four sub-variants of the plastic sealed cardboard hangtab box (this particular copy of Super Mario Bros. being the "3 Code" variant) that were produced within the span of one year. Each sub-variant of the cardboard hangtab black box, produced within that timeframe, had a production period of just a few months; a drop in the bucket compared to the title's overall production run. In short, a cardboard hangtab copy of any early Nintendo Entertainment System game brings a certain air of "vintage" unrivaled by its successors.

 

Some nerd now has the most treasurable of all.

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