Someone paid $2 million for an unopened Super Mario Bros game
If you had an NES, you had Super Mario Bros. It came with the system by default at launch so you didn't really have a choice. I was very young at the time but I think this might set a record for the best pack-in game of all time because there weren't a great many games available at the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System and if you ask me Super Mario Bros was the best one available at the time. To get this for "free" was pretty amazing.
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If you were alive in the mid 80's and had the foresight to realize that the NES was going to become the iconic collectable that it is today who would have imagined that these things would be selling for as much as they are.
This copy of the game was previously purchased for $140,000, which to me is already a crazy price but then they turned it around and re-sold it for $2 million. The purchaser is anonymous but I am guessing we are talking about one extremely rich nerd who probably got involved in BTC very early on and accidentally HODL'd.
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I can understand why there would be very few of these unopened these days and I have no idea how it is that they certify original packaging or that it is unopened but I would imagine that it simply remains unopened because there aren't really very many of them in existence. In my house it was opened immediately and not only that but the packaging was probably destroyed in the process by the ravenous movements of me and my siblings.
There were a ton of things from the 80's that I owned that if I had just left them in the boxes would have made me a very rich person today but then again, those experiences such as my He-Man and Star Wars toys, as well as basically all of my video games that I played resulted in some extremely good times that probably resulted in better mental health and a feeling of not wanting to be dead and actually pursuing becoming a reasonably successful adult.
So to whoever had the patience to not open this, or who accidentally bought two of them and forgot about it but still managed to keep it in mint condition, kudos to you. There must not be very many of them at all because 2 million is a lot of money for something that you can easily emulate for free online.
I wonder what the collection of the person who bought it looks like. This person must have EVERYTHING.
I'm gonna have a look around and see what could possibly end up being the big collectible of the future. These days almost everything is digital so i can't really imagine what it would be. Got any ideas?
Good question - 1st generation iPhones and iPods are probably up there already. A 1st generation Tesla maybe. What about things like Tamagochis or Furbys - what's the modern day equivalent? A 2020 bottle of Corona maybe. An unopened Covid home testing kit could be worth a punt. An unopened copy of Persona 5 is already hard to come by so could be another one. I'm running out of ideas.
funny you would mention Persona 5. I got so excited because everyone was raving about how that game was the best thing ever! I really didn't care for it.
It consistently appears at the top of all-time best games for the PS Vita so I bought it with the assumption that it would be good - I was disappointed too. It's got a repetitive tedium to it that doesn't really appeal.
Another thing I've started seeing graded and encased in carbonite...I mean plastic...is VHS tapes. I bet an original, unopened, mint Black Cauldron goes for a good bit of money though I'm not really sure what VHS tapes are considered most valuable.
i think that the tape would have still deteriorated over time. I suppose if there weren't many of them remaining it could be valuable. The guy who bought this cart isn't going to play it.
There is a very wealthy friend of mine that always flies coach when he can definitely afford business or first class. Hell, he could probably afford his own plane but always flies coach. I ask him why he does this and he just says that "no matter how much money you have, some things are just unnecessary." That's how I feel about paying 2 mill for an unopened NES game . :)
I suppose a physical copy of any video game today if it is the original print (do they make multiple prints?) has a good chance of being valuable a long time from now because fewer and fewer people get physical copies and those that do tend to open them.
ooh i just thought of another thing. If you could get your hands on an unopned Nokia "brick phone" that had a battery that would last 6 weeks on and was basically indestructible, I bet that would be a collectible in the future.
I've got an unopened Turbo Duo. I'll let it go for a million. Seriously though, I bet there can't be too many of those around...