Game Left in Desk Sets Record

Somebody paid $660,000 for a video game Friday, the highest price ever. The sealed copy of the Nintendo video game Super Mario Bros. was sold through Heritage Auctions, the Verge reports. The price far eclipsed the $114,000 a Super Mario Bros. game brought last summer, and the $156,000 a Super Mario Bros. 3 sold for in November. The auction company called the one auctioned Friday the oldest sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. that it's ever offered. It went on sale in 1986, and the packaging was changed in early 1987, so there aren't many exactly like it around.

The seller, who wasn't identified, bought the game as a Christmas gift in 1986, per CNN. "It stayed in the bottom of my office desk this whole time since the day I bought it," the seller told Heritage. "I never thought anything about it." WataGames graded the game for Heritage and pronounced it "the finest copy known to have been professionally graded for auction." It's also one of the earliest copies to be shrink-wrapped, Heritage said, instead of bearing a sticker seal. (More Super Mario Brothers stories.)