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Unopened Super Mario Bros. video game from 1986 sells for $660K

DALLAS — This might be the best argument for keeping a video game under wraps.

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An unopened copy of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. that was bought in 1986 sold for $660,000 on Friday in Heritage Auctions’ Comics & Comic Art Auction.

According to the Dallas-based auction house, the game was bought as a Christmas gift 35 years ago and was stored in a desk drawer, Heritage Auctions said in a news release.

The game remained sealed in plastic and with its hang tab still intact when it was found earlier this year.

“It stayed in the bottom of my office desk this whole time since the day I bought it,” the seller, who asked not to be identified, stated in a news release. “I never thought anything about it.”

The final auction price includes a 20% buyer’s premium.

“This particular copy was produced in late 1986, and it was one of the earliest copies produced that had plastic shrink wrap, rather than sticker seal,” Valarie McLeckie, Heritage’s video game specialist, said in a statement. “By early 1987, Nintendo was producing a version that had another new variation to their original packaging (an additional ‘code’).

“Since the production window for this copy and others like it was so short, finding another copy from this same production run in similar condition would be akin to looking for (a) single drop of water in an ocean,” Valarie McLeckie, Heritage’s video game specialist, said in a statement.

The price for the video game topped the previous high of $114,000 for another unopened copy produced in 1987, Heritage Auctions said. That copy sold last summer in a Heritage Auctions sale.

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