A sealed copy of the original Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) sold for $3 million at Heritage Auctions, setting a new record for the highest price ever paid for a vintage video game at auction. The sale was announced on June 12, 2026, according to Heritage Auctions and confirmed by The Verge.

The cartridge was in near-perfect condition — rated 9.6 out of 10 by PSA, a professional grading company — and still had its original sticker. In the collectibles world, condition is everything. The difference between a 9.0 and a 9.6 can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in price.

This is not the first time a sealed game has broken a price record. Over the past few years, record-setting auction sales have kept climbing as collectors, and now investment firms, have become serious about buying classic games.

What changed is that video games now have the same kind of professional authentication system that rare coins and sports cards have used for decades. A company called PSA grades games based on their condition and gives them an official certificate. When a game has a certified grade from a trusted source, buyers can feel confident spending millions of dollars on it. The grading system turned games from nostalgic keepsakes into items that feel like real investments.

Super Mario Bros. came out in North America in 1985 and is one of the most famous video games ever made. Sealed original copies — games that were never opened — have become increasingly hard to find over the 40+ years since release. The original sticker on this particular copy adds value because different batches of the game had different label designs, and collectors prize the early variants.

There is a question worth considering: can the market actually support prices this high. The collectibles market for graded games and cards has gone through ups and downs. After spending surged during the pandemic, prices cooled down. A $3 million sale for a single cartridge might reflect a few wealthy buyers willing to spend heavily on one rare item, not necessarily a sign that the whole market operates at that level. Record-setting auctions happen when the right buyer meets the right item at the right moment—but that does not always mean the market as a whole can sustain those prices over time.

What is clear: this sale establishes Heritage Auctions as the primary marketplace for high-value games and confirms PSA grading as the industry standard. For collectors who own similar high-grade Nintendo games from that era, a $3 million price tag on a 9.6 Super Mario Bros. likely changes how they think about what their own collections could be worth.