DALLAS, TX.- The world’s leading collectibles auction house is poised to make video game collecting history.

What the highest-graded Action Comics No. 1 is to comics, Honus Wagner T206 is to baseball cards or Pikachu Illustrator card is to trading card games collecting, the highest-graded copy of the earliest sealed edition of Super Mario Bros., the Nintendo Entertainment System game that revolutionized home console gaming, is to video game collecting. This Holy Grail of the hobby is the headline lot of Heritage’s June 12–13 Video Games Signature® Auction, an incredible assemblage of artifacts from early and classic gaming history.

“This is the single most significant video game collectible that exists,” says Evan Masingill, Heritage Auctions’ Consignment Director of Video Games. “It was discovered just two months ago inside a brand-new Control Deck NES console bundle, which meant the game was completely untouched for 40 years — just an incredible level of preservation.”

The scarcity, condition and status of this newly discovered copy can hardly be exaggerated. It represents the pinnacle of video game collecting. Bearing the coveted gloss sticker adopted in early 1986, this is the earliest confirmed sealed copy of the most important game cartridge in history. It is one of only three known sealed copies from this second-production run — a variant that has never appeared in a public auction in sealed condition. Of the three known sealed copies, this is the finest, with a PSA 9.6 A++ grade. The others are VGA 80 and Wata 9.4 A++, the latter of which made history as the first six-figure video game sale in a 2019 private transaction.

“The pop culture collectibles markets, which include video games, are exploding in value right now,” Masingill says. “The top copy of the most influential video game in existence has tremendous investment potential as a trophy collectible.”

In 2019, Heritage Auctions became the first auction house to offer graded video games. Two years later, it sold an extraordinary Wata 9.8 A++ Sealed copy of Super Mario 64 for $1.56 million and a Wata 9.0 A Sealed copy of The Legend of Zelda for $870,000, smashing auction price world records in its first standalone Video Games Auction — a massively successful event that realized more than $8.47 million, soaring beyond pre-auction estimates. Those copies still hold the records for the highest and second-highest auction video game prices.

A thumbnail history of Super Mario Bros. establishes the importance of the title to the Nintendo brand. Nintendo’s Family Computer, also known as the Famicom, launched in Japan in 1983, the year the home gaming console industry collapsed in North America. Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi believed high-quality software would drive hardware sales and established a new division tasked with creating a game strong enough to break through to North America. Expanding and brightening the world he had cocreated for the arcade games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Mario Bros., designer Shigeru Miyamoto created an intuitive and addictive horizontally scrolling adventure set to iconic music that sends Mario on a journey through eight distinct colorful worlds to rescue Princess Toadstool from Bowser, King of the Koopas.

When the Nintendo Entertainment System test-launched in select U.S. cities in October 1985 and then nationwide, Super Mario Bros. quickly became the defining game of the system whose instant popularity established it as the dominant U.S. console — and the title credited with an entire industry’s dramatic comeback.

Mario was the face of Nintendo and would go on to star in hundreds of titles and become one of the most recognized fictional characters in the world. The finest known example from the earliest confirmed sealed production, this copy represents the moment Super Mario Bros. became the foundation of console gaming and a cornerstone of pop culture history.

Another superlative early copy, one of just two PSA 9.8 examples of the fourth-print production identifiable by its hangtab for retail display, is also among the most elite Mario collectibles available.

Just as Super Mario Bros. created the blueprint for the modern side-scroller, The Legend of Zelda broke the mold for top-down POV games in 1987, combining action and role-playing game styles set in an expansive, complex fantasy world. Like Mario, its elfin protagonist, Link, is on a quest to save a princess, but the similarities end there, as Zelda was more strategy- and map-based, with players relying on weapons, magic rings, ability upgrades and life-restoring hearts acquired in the course of gameplay. The cartridge featured an internal battery that allowed players to save their progress, a novel innovation at the time. It, too, was massively influential and spawned multiple sequels, spin-offs and merchandise. And it, too, is represented in this auction with a premier collectible: the highest-graded first-production example ever offered at public auction, a newly discovered copy that tops the census with a PSA 9.6 A+ grade.

One could practically establish a museum of Nintendo history with the auction’s selection of NES cartridges, such as a coveted sealed first-production copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 — identifiable by the left-justified placement of “Bros.” on the cover — topping the VGA census with an 85+. The auction is also replete with beautifully intact copies of iconic “Black-Box” titles from the console’s earliest days, including:

• A PSA 9.0 A Sealed Hangtab Donkey Kong Jr.
• A PSA 9.8 A+ Sealed Hangtab Slalom
• A PSA 8.5 CIB Matte Sticker Variant First-Production Copy of Super Mario Bros.
• A PSA 9.6 A+ Sealed Hangtab Excitebike
• A PSA 9.6 A+ Sealed Hangtab Wrecking Crew
• A PSA 8.0 A+ Sealed Hogan’s Alley

From more recent Nintendo history, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64 was a monumental step forward in 3D adventure gaming with innovations such as its Z-targeting system. This VGA 90+ Sealed Collector’s Edition is a nicely preserved copy of the version sent to customers who preordered the game.

Other highlights include, but are certainly not limited to:

• A Wata 9.0 A+ Sealed copy of Chrono Trigger for SNES

• A VGA 80+ Sealed Game Boy Console

• The original art from Neal Adams’ Mario Face for Nintendo World Championships (NWC) / PowerFest 1990 Ad, which became the go-to image for depictions of Mario

• From the auction’s non-Nintendo offerings, a VGA 90 Sealed Collector’s Edition World of Warcraft for PC