Friday 17 July 2020

Game News - Most Expensive Game Ever!

As any of us who try to collect retro games these days must already know very well, prices have been steadily increasing for years to the point where now it's just not realistic to covet certain titles, with more joining that number daily. I always wanted to collect all the decent PC Engine games, for example (or at least the ones that can be played by non-Japanese-speakers), but many of those now go for three-figures. Bah! Things are obviously much worse for anyone that collects factory-sealed games too, as this news that found its way to me today proves.

Indeed, for during a public auction of vintage comics and original comic art held by Heritage Auctions in Texas on July 10th, a copy of the original Super Mario Bros for the American NES went under the hammer. This was not, however, a normal version of what is, let's face it, one of the most common games in the world. This copy was in fact complete with its original factory seal and hangtab - something which made it the highest graded (9.4) copy ever sold and which also, unsurprisingly, increased its value significantly. The result was a final sale price of..... $114,000!! This eye-watering figure quite comfortably makes it the most expensive video game ever sold at public auction!

Quite what the buyer (who wishes to remain anonymous) plans to do with the game is therefore anybody's guess but I suppose its most likely fate is to sit on a shelf or in a drawer (or safe!) gathering dust, but let's hope it at least has an interesting view. I suppose this huge price shouldn't be all that surprising though - as they get older it's inevitable that some copies of games will earn higher and higher prices, so we can probably expect this new record to be broken again in the not-too-distant future.
 

2 comments:

  1. That really is insane. I took a kind of break from video game collecting for a few years since 2015 (still buying the odd one here and there, but not paying anywhere near as much attention to game prices as I was in the early 2010s) and am starting to get back into it now. Its like I'm re-entering a completely different world though, game prices (even in Japan) are nothing like what I remember them being. And 114,000$ for SMB just drives that point home.

    I wish I had completed my Famicom collection back when I had the chance, there are still some expensive games on my want list that I probably could have bought for $100 or so which look like they will now cost 5 to 10 times that much.

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    1. Hey Sean, good to hear from you. I used to enjoy reading about your collecting exploits, especially when Famicom Dog was involved :) But yeah, collecting is basically unrealistic for most normal people nowadays unless you aren't bothered about having the really pricey games. I gave up my idea of collecting for the PC Engine too. It's getting ridiculous. Thanks for the comment anyway, best wishes :)

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