Mint Copy of Super Mario Bros. Sells for £500,000!

Imagine finding half a million pounds in your desk drawer! That’s what happened to one lucky seller who made a fortune on Friday when his copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for $660,000 – around £476,000!

Still in its factory shrinkwrap, the copy of the original 1986 game was super rare having come from the first release run. According to the seller, it had been bought as a Christmas present back in 1986 and never given, dropped into a desk drawer and forgotten about until earlier this year.

WataGames, a professional grading company, rated it at 9.6—an A+—and said it was “the finest copy known to have been professionally graded for auction.”

This sale makes a new record for the sale of a video game cartridge, but it wasn’t the only game making money that day, with a 1987 Mega Man cartridge in the same auction going for $144,000 and a copy of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (also 1987) reaching $102,000.

Not a bad investment for a cartridge which had a suggested retail price of $24.99 at the time!