DALLAS, TX.- Heritage Auctions continues to blaze new trails in Video Game collecting, a category of collectibles for which it has established itself as the dominant auction house. On June 12, the highest-graded copy of the earliest sealed edition of Super Mario Bros. — the iconic game whose popularity established Nintendo’s dominance in home console gaming in the 1980s — sold for $3 million at the June 12–13 Video Games Signature® Auction, hammering the previous $2 million record set in a 2021 private sale.

Bearing the gloss sticker adopted in early 1986, it is the earliest confirmed sealed copy of the most important game cartridge in history and 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.

“Like any collectible, be it Trading Cards, Comics or Video Games, collectors place a premium on condition and print run,” says Evan Masingill, Heritage Auctions’ Consignment Director for Video Games. “Being the best, earliest copy of Super Mario Bros., it represents the peak of all video game collectibles. This test market copy predates the NES’s nationwide launch. Given the extreme rarity and what this game represents, it doesn’t surprise me that this copy has become the world’s most valuable video game.”

The auction brought in a total of $5,047,669, with classic Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges heavily represented in the nostalgia-fueled event. Another early Super Mario Bros. copy in exceptionally good condition, one of just two PSA 9.8 examples of the fourth-print production identifiable by its hangtab for retail display, was the second-biggest price of the auction, realizing $575,000.

A premier example of the iconic top-down-POV fantasy action/role-playing franchise starter The Legend of Zelda was the third of the three lots to reach at least six digits, taking in $375,000. Like the headline lot, it is a very recently discovered copy, in this case topping the census with a PSA 9.6+, making it the highest-graded first-production copy ever offered at public auction.

Classic NES cartridges nearly ran the top-lot table, comprising the top six lots and nine of the top 10. A PSA 9.8 A+ Sealed Hangtab Slalom, the first sealed hangtab copy ever publicly sold and the top copy of just three to appear on the census at all, raced to a $75,000 finish.

A sealed first-production copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 that tops the VGA census with an 85+ rounded out the top five lots, realizing $68,750, and a PSA 8.5 CIB Matte Sticker Variant First-Production Copy of Super Mario Bros. went for a final price of $40,000 for sixth. The rest of the top 10 lots:

• $35,000 for a VGA 90 Sealed Collector’s Edition World of Warcraft for PC

• $35,000 for a PSA 9.6 A+ Sealed Hangtab Excitebike

• $32,500 for a PSA 9.0 A Sealed Hangtab Donkey Kong Jr.

• $25,000 for a PSA 8.0 A Sealed No Rev-A, Round SOQ, Mid-Production Super Mario Bros.