Last week, a sealed, graded copy of Super Mario Bros. appeared on Heritage auctions, poised to break all-game collectible sales records. At the time, the copy was already bid up to well over $300,000. At the end of the week, after being bid up even further, the Wata 9.6 copy of Super Mario Bros. had sold for an astonishing $660,000—the highest price ever for a gaming collectible.
The copy in question is a 9.6 Wata "1-code" hang tab variant of the original Super Mario Bros. game. Before the general release, cardboard hang tabs were used in place of plastic sealing. As such, any copy of Super Mario Bros. featuring a hang tab is one that was released to the test market in the U.S. Among these older copies, there are four further subvariants that help collectors differentiate between test market versions. A "1-code" is among the oldest of these. For sake of comparison, a "3-code" variant graded at 9.4, sold for $110,000 last year. With the 9.6 "1-code" version being even older and in better condition, it was a shoo-in to threaten the game collectible record.
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Now, with a $660,000 price tag, this latest auction has smashed all previous records. Not only did it nearly quadruple the price of the highest sold game ever, held by a first production copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 at $156,000, but it also snatched the record for most expensive game collectible ever. This record was previously held by a prototype of the Super NES CD-ROM—coined by fans as the Nintendo PlayStation—which sold for $360,000. Shockingly, the 9.6 Wata "1-code" Super Mario Bros. sold for more than both of those records combined.
Not only is this one of the best quality and oldest copies to ever hit the market, but the timing could not have been better. As Mario celebrates the end of his controversial 35th anniversary, the mustached face of Nintendo is at the forefront of every fan's mind. The ridiculous hype that currently surrounds the Mario franchise is another reminder of its enduring popularity and a reminder that a copy like this is a solid investment for any collector.
In fact, considering Mario's importance in gaming culture, it's likely that the next copy to dethrone this one will have to be yet another even older, better quality version. At the same time as the 9.6 Wata "1-code" copy was exploding on Heritage auctions, prices for resellers' copies of Super Mario 3D All-Stars were skyrocketing on eBay and the like.