Super Mario

The earliest US copies shipped in a cardboard hangtab box closed with a plastic sticker seal and a production code printed beside it — the 'sticker-sealed' first prints that predate the later shrink-wrapped runs. A WATA 9.8 A++ example changed hands privately in 2021 for $2,000,000, the highest price ever paid for a video game. The same gold-standard title is a €40 loose cart: the widest price ladder in the hobby on a single game.

A sealed WATA 9.8 A++ Super Mario 64 sold for $1,560,000 at Heritage in July 2021 — the record for any game until the SMB private sale weeks later. The 3D launch title that redefined the platformer is the most compounding sealed N64 object in the market; the gray-cart Player's Choice reissue trades at a fraction of the black-label first print.

The first US print run carries a box where the 'Bros.' wordmark sits behind Mario's elbow so the L points left; the later, common run shifted it right. A sealed left-facing WATA 9.2 A+ copy sold for $156,000 in 2020 — briefly the most expensive game in the world. The canonical lesson that on Mario, the variant is the value.

Bundled with the SNES at launch and printed in enormous numbers, yet a sealed standalone first print — original cardboard box, no 'Player's Choice' banner — is genuinely scarce in high grade. The cleanest first-print-vs-reprint lesson on the platform, and the SNES Mario the market anchors on.

The Game Boy's launch platformer and the start of the handheld Mario line. The first-print box predates the later seal and 'Players Choice' variants; sealed high-grade copies are the cornerstone of any Game Boy Mario shelf.