This Mario is really Super. On Friday, collectibles site Rally announced that someone paid $2 million for an unopened 1985 Super Mario Bros. video game cartridge, setting a world record. That sale breaks the record set less than a month ago, when an anonymous buyer at Heritage Auctions paid $1.56 million for a 25-year-old copy of Super Mario 64.
"A NEW WORLD RECORD on Rally w/ the $2,000,000 sale of our 1985 Super Mario Bros., marking the HIGHEST PRICE EVER PAID for a video game of any title," the site announced in a tweet.
Punks, X-Men, Declarations, and some news...
— Rally (@OnRallyRd) August 6, 2021
🏆A NEW WORLD RECORD on Rally🏆
...w/ the $2,000,000 sale of our 1985 Super Mario Bros., marking the HIGHEST PRICE EVER PAID for a video game of any title.
Read more in todays New York Times (cc: @nytimes): https://t.co/mJzEcVMXuQ pic.twitter.com/segsfw6Jw9
While the previous record was set on an auction site, Rally has a different system, buying items and inviting people to invest in shares of those items. When an offer comes in on an item, investors vote on whether to sell or hold.
"The (video game) space is incredibly hot right now," a representative for Rally said. Three thousand shares in the Super Mario Bros. game were originally offered to investors at a total value of $150,000 in August 2020.
It's a profitable sale for sure. The New York Times reports that Rally bought the game in April 2020 for $140,000, and that investors passed on a $300,000 offer later that year. A graduate student who spoke to the newspaper said he invested $100 in shares of the game and made $950 from the sale.
