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More than $150,000 for a Mario game? In this economy?

Yes, on Friday morning, Heritage Auctions announcedit sold a rare, sealed copyof Super Mario Bros. 3for the original Nintendo Entertainment System for a record-breaking $156,000.

Twenty bidders battled to spend the most ever paid for a video game.

Why did this copy of the game sell for so much?

According to Heritage, sealed copies Super Mario Bros. 3with this particular packaging are rare. Most gamers recognize the cover art of the game, with Mario gliding through the sky with his raccoon cap and the title of the game centered above him. But the earliest production of the box art looked a tad bit different.

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A photo of the exact copy of the sealed, rare record-breaking version of Super Marios Bros. 3.Credit: HA.comSEE ALSO:'Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity' is an excessive Zelda spin-off that mostly works

The thing that makes this box art so special is the word “Bros.” appears on the left-hand side of the box, covering Mario’s glove. That’s it.

And, pack rats, before you go digging through your old Nintendo game collection to see if you too have this version of the cover art, there’s something else that makes this record-breaking copy unique.

The vintage video game grading company, Wata Games, gave this copy of Super Mario Bros. 3a score of 9.2 A+. That means the sealed copy was in near-perfect shape. For comparison, Heritage points out that another sealed copy of this version of Super Mario Bros. 3sold in July for $38,400. The difference? It was only graded 9.0 A.

Today’s sale shattered the previous record holder, a sealed copy of the original Super Mario Bros.which sold for $114,000 just this past July. In Heritage’s press release, the auction house seemed surprised to have broken this record twice in the same year.

"That said, it's no surprise that another Mario game, which so many of us grew up with, would set the new bar,” the company said in a statement.

Heritage shared details of another notable video game auction today. A sealed original copy of the 1998 Nintendo Gameboy game Pokémon Red Versionsold for $84,000, the highest price ever paid for a Pokémon game.

Here’s hoping looking at these sealed, very expensive video games makes their new owners happy.

TopicsGamingNintendo