Drawer Stored Video Game Nets Big Money For Owner

One of the biggest video games of all time was Super Mario Bros. When the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) came out in the 80s it blew away all other consoles mostly because the games you played on it was exactly like the game you played in the arcade. It was revolutionary and all those quarters went toward the games you brought home instead of the arcade owners. Imagine getting an iconic game and just tossing it in a desk drawer and basically forgetting about it for 35 year. Never played. Never even open from it’s original plastic. Seems like a waste of $50. Until 2021 rolls around and they pull it out and put it up for $660,000 – the highest price ever for a video game. Heritage Auctions, based in Dallas, said the copy of Super Mario Bros. that was sold as part of the Comics & Comic Art Auction during the weekend was part of a short run that was produced in 1986, before Nintendo switched from shrink-wrapped packaging to a sticker seal. “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 single drop of water in an ocean. Never say never, but there’s a good chance it can’t be done,” Valarie McLeckie, video games director for Heritage Auctions, said in a statement. The video game had been purchased as a Christmas gift in 1986, but it ended up spending 35 years untouched in a desk drawer. “It stayed in the bottom of my office desk this whole time since the day I bought it,” said the seller, who requested anonymity. “I never thought anything about it.”