A sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. sitting next to its original NES Control Deck is at $637,500 with the hammer still days away.
That is Lot 28025 in Heritage Auctions' Video Games Signature Auction #7453. The bid is live and climbing as of June 11. Add the 25% buyer's premium and that single lot lands near $797,000 if it holds.
The Banner Lot
Lot 28025 is a Super Mario Bros. graded PSA 9.6 A++, sealed, gloss sticker, second production, NES, Nintendo, 1985, USA. The hook is the bundle. It ships with the Control Deck console.
A sealed game and the machine it ran on, together, untouched since the Reagan administration.
At $637,500 before premium, the math runs 637,500 times 1.25, or $796,875 all-in. If that number holds through Friday, it could rank among the most expensive video games ever sold at auction, second only to the Super Mario 64 record.
That benchmark is a Wata 9.8 A++ copy of Super Mario 64 that brought $1,560,000 through Heritage in July 2021. Still the all-time mark. We tracked the full list in the most expensive Mario collectibles ever sold.
The Rest of the Top Lots
The auction is not a one-lot show. The board behind 28025 is deep.
Lot 28026 is a Super Mario Bros. PSA 9.8 A+, sealed, hangtab, 1 code, mid-production, NES 1985. Current bid $180,000.
Lot 28017 is a Legend of Zelda PSA 9.6 A+, sealed, NES TM, no Rev-A, first production, NES 1987. Current bid $160,000.
Lot 28029 is a Super Mario Bros. 3 graded VGA 85+, sealed, "Bros." left, first production, NES 1990. Current bid $55,000.
Lot 28023 is a Slalom PSA 9.8 A+, sealed, hangtab, 2 code, first production, NES 1987. Current bid $26,000.
Lot 28010 is a Donkey Kong Jr. PSA 9.0 A, sealed, hangtab, 1 code, mid-production. Current bid $25,000.
All figures current as of June 11. All of them are likely to move before the close.
The PSA Detail
Look at the grading houses on those top lots. PSA, PSA, PSA.
The old sealed-game records were Wata-graded. The Mario 64 mark, the $870,000 Zelda from 2021, the $100,150 Super Mario Bros. that started it all in February 2019. Wata on every slab.
PSA now grades video games, and the banner lots in this sale carry PSA labels. The slab on the shelf has changed. We covered the broader shift when CGC expanded its own video game grading.
How the Sale Is Structured
There are 157 lots across two sessions.
Session 1 is the floor session, lots 28001 through 28068, closing Friday June 12 at 4:00 PM CT. Session 2 is the internet session, lots 28069 through 28157, closing Saturday June 13 at 4:00 PM CT.
Buyer's premium is 25%. The minimum is $49 per lot.
Aggregate current bids stand at $1,784,944 as of June 11. That number was around $1.57 million earlier the same day. The room is filling up.
The Context
Heritage held its first dedicated video game sale in February 2019. The headline lot then was a sealed Super Mario Bros. at $100,150, a record at the time and the first video game to crack six figures.
Seven years later a single Mario bundle is sitting at six times that, before premium, and it is not even the all-time mark.
Other Heritage benchmarks frame where this sits. Zelda at $870,000 in 2021. John Madden Football at $480,000 in January 2022. A round SOQ Zelda at $384,000 in August 2022. The sealed-game market corrected hard after the 2021 peak, but the top-end Nintendo titles keep finding seven-figure air.
This is a live Auction Watch piece. Session 1 closes Friday June 12 and Session 2 closes Saturday June 13. We will update with final hammer prices and totals after the close.
