Whew, I've never done a video about "news" before, and I don't plan to do it often, but I thought this might be interesting since there's a little more history to it than meets the eye. Let me know what you guys think!
Another solid video, Kelsey. You pack a lot of relevant info in nicely. The history lesson is what makes this video. Without that, it's just another headline about some item selling for a ton of money.
People pay crazy amounts of money for rare sneakers, jewelry, Beatles albums, stamps, sports memorabilia, cars and ..... yes now video games. It's still shocking to most of us collectors though!
It's also shocking when people pay that amount of money for anything else, never heard someone finding it normal when it's about shoes, stamps or whatever.
Kelsey, you should do these news videos more often! I opened several tabs all of which were going to discuss this and after watching yours I closed the rest. Short, concise, informative and straight to the point!
Wow, I never heard of those stickers before, super interesting. This felt way more like a history video than your typical "video game news" video, which was awesome. Great job!! :D
This is one of the few scenarios a professional grading service is necessary lol. I imagine we’ll see a bit of an uptick in fake stickers, but the pros will be able to tell!
@@KelseyLewin I begrudgingly accept this as a reason for the Video Game Authority with an "I guesssss." Just know that it also comes with some more exaggerated sighs and hair pulling.
0:28 Channels that talk about the so called “game crash” always fail to mention that this was only in America, games were selling fine in the EU and Japan
"Only known" likely not the only one though. I live in NY and have owned sticker dot copies for almost all of the black box games by February 1986, including the same SMB style copy as seen here. The thing about sticker dot copies is that you really have no way of telling they are truly factory sealed. As a kid I used to open these from the bottom flap so I could easily make it look like the game was still sealed in order to get a full refund from our local KayBee Toys.
But are you a 24 year old gaming historian? If not, how can we believe you? Kelsey read things on the Internet about what happened before she was born. She is an expert on this stuff!
@@gordonshumway7465 by your logic there is no point Learning about history before about 1910 as its all people 'reading about stuff before they were born' that's some trump level thinking right there
Interesting! I wonder how many more undiscovered sticker-sealed copies exist? I suspect this will eventually become an iconic NES collectible on par with the 1990 Nintendo World Championship cartridge. Great content and hair as always. Cheers!
I love your channel Kelsey. You are very comfortable in front of the camera, and your presentation style is entertaining without being over-the-top. Keep up the very good work!
It's not that surprising. The group who bought it is doing it purely for investment. Similar to Wayne Greztky and his wealthy buddy making news buying the the T206 Honus Wagner baseball card in the 90s. With companies make a fortune off of grading anything, it ends up just creating a market for these kinds of collectors. Which is total cool. That's the great thing about being a fan or collector, get what you enjoy in the format or condition you like. Have a great weekend Kelsey, you're awesome!
njmaxrocks the only reason the value jumps is because rich weiners convince other rich weiners that it’s valuable. The auction house in this story deals in WATA coins mainly, wata has never seen this great of a game in their entire two years grading them and it’s a publicity stunt to get the word out, nothing more, nothing less
This is a super cool, informative, and to the point video. You should totally do this from time to time with other major moments in the collecting community!
I guarantee this isn't the only one out there. I bet people from old electronic store buyouts have some in warehouses as old new stock and maybe some collectors have some. They probably know they have sealed ones but didn't realize the differences in seals. After this one sold, I bet you will see more and more for sale. Unfortunately that means that fakes will run rampant as well.
As somebody who plays some Trading card games here and there I definitely had an idea of why it was so expensive. When you get into limited first prints and grading, the value on certain cards will skyrocket so why not the same for one of the most iconic video games of all time? This video was enlightening as to what specifically makes it somewhat more unique than its more common counterparts, and begs the question whether this is something that would be easy to counterfeit or if in general graded video games are going to become more sought after in the future.
Wow! I discovered your channel, thanks to Kotaku! I watched a few video and I loved all of them! Congrats! I have a bachelor's degree in art history and I appreciate that kind of work.
Been seeing you in my recommended feed for a bit now but finally clicked because I somehow missed this event. Subbing because them shelves in the background look promising.
I do not collect graded games. They are a nice service for those who are investing into video games. I guarantee that others will try to fake these and sell them as the real thing. WATA has their work cut out.
Great video! A very interesting topic with a very interesting background. Nice! Also, I really like the wonderswan intro. I've been looking into buying one hopefully soon
Because you have the knowledge of the significance of the time and item, this news bit for you was/is well worth it. I knew that New York was the test market for the NES release early on, but had no idea there were "variants" in the games sold at the time. Very informative video even in the short amount of time! Thanks for sharing!
Well its the sticker, AND the sticker is unbroken, ANNNNND the box is almost in pristine shape after 40 years. People cant seem to understand that collectibles get their value due to rarity and quality. Just like you can buy a low grade diamond for couple hundred, trying to find a perfect flawless blue diamond would cost Millions to Billions. Mario carts are cheap, Full boxed ones are worth more, sealed boxes worth even more, unsealed test market copies more, sealed test market even more, and sealed test market copies with the box almost pristine being the cream of the crop.
Would it be super cool to own a one of a kind Mario Bros game? Of course, but there's no way I could justify spending that kind of money, I don't care how rich (Which I'm not) I am. Still, great story and explanation! Thanks Kelsey!
you could make one? but I guess in collector terms it wouldn't be as valuable because no one else has it. guess it could be priced similarly to traditional folk art, by form, function and cultural significance. too bad those only become valuable once the makers aren't around anymore
This video should be posted in the comments section of every "you might have gold in your attic" article misleading people into thinking their copy of Super Mario Bros. is highly valuable.
That's enough money for a decent toyota and a good down payment for a house, I sure wouldn't pay that much for a game even if I had an unlimited budget
I hate the VGA I don't think they know any better than an average collector plus they seal up games in stupid little plastic prisons that make people think they can charge 10x the price for a game in identical condition. How many unreleased lost games are degrading in their cells in some speculative investors vault instead of being dumped shared & enjoyed?
Indeed. Anything I've ever seen that has been entombed in a VGA box is always overpriced, no matter how common or "OMG RARE!1!!1" it is, but those prices are on the sellers end. Still, they give sellers false hope that whatever it is they're selling is worth far more than it really is.
Yes, they are most certainly a scam for the most part. It's been documented too. As a test, someone sent in the very same NES game on two occasions and received two completely different VGA ratings. Thus proving they are completely run by opinion and no valid rating system. I.E. you have to catch whichever "Professional VGA grader" is in a good mood for the day if you want your VGA fee to be worth it. There was another incident where a VGA game was proven to be a reseal too. I'd stay far away from VGA, WATA Games, and any other group who gets into the grading business. They are only good for driving the prices up on eBay, and in reality, the amount they are raised is probably about what the seller pays in grading fees.
i would love to see some unreleased games get dumped but laws and NDAs get in the way. if a proto game gets dumped, the person could get sued by whoever owns the rights to that IP
This copy showed up on a recent episode of History Channel's "Pawn Stars". The seller asked for $1,000,000. An expert (founder of the company that certified it) appraised it pretty high saying it COULD fetch that amount if it got into a bidding war at auction. Ultimately, the pawn shop decided not to make an offer and the seller seemed happy to keep the cartridge for now.
Great video! Might be a good idea to do videos like this every now and then for other unique / interesting news that comes up. Really looking forward to more!
Wouldnt it be super easy to fake one of these with a standard boxed copy and a sticker printing machine? Its not even shrink wrapped so it wouldnt seem that hard to do. Not encouraging this of course just saying the authenticity is surely suspect?
That’s why it’s been verified by an expert grading company...same way comics are (which to me would seem even easier to fake!) But I totally get the fear.
@@magaprez5321 Nope. The exact opposite happened in the UK, the industry sky rocketed. Guru Larry, Tophat Gaming Man and many others have done videos explaining why.
@pcsvgs With a sports cad you see the entire product front and back and it keeps a quality standard. I can pick it up and view it get the same joy as if it was out of the graded case. Since cards and comics, grading exploded to stupid shit like action figures, video games, etc. You are grading a BOX, you have no visual view of the contents, can never play it. Shit the box could have a different game inside, missing parts, resealed (pro scammers) you'd never know. Why is a graded Mario Bros graded say 9.0 worth $5000? Who are the looney tunes buying this shit? Lets get a docu on the these graded collectors.
Very interesting video Kelsey, I enjoyed it. Keep them coming. :-) I once bought the Starwing 'EU Competition Edition' for SNES. Turned out it was like a demo, not a full game, intented to compete on a tournament back in the days. Apparently it was pretty rare, so sold it for the amount of a brand new PS4. Great deal!
This was a great video and very Interesting. I learned something that I didn't know before today. Great Job. 100/10 Will be watching for more videos in the future!
That is a crazy amount of money to spend on a video game but the copy sounds very special and rare. The most I've ever spent on a retro video game was about 150 US dollars. Great video.
I knew about the huge gamble they took with FAO Schwartz, but I had no clue that this crazy variant existed. Your history videos are always so informative.
What’d be more interesting is the story of how this box survived for over 35 years. Like maybe it came out of some attic in Redmond or if it’s from the same shadow network of collectors that produced the NES SimCity? I wonder if there’s an equivalent test-run stickered copy of Golf or Excitebike or whatever floating around and it only auctions for a fraction of Mario.
Good video - nice concise explanation of why it went for so much. Kind of equates to the first edition of a book that's had many printings. You can't really overstate the importance of Super Mario Bros. on the North American video game market.
Awesome job explaining this. People are loosing their mind thinking standard Mario games are going to be the next hot item. It almost reminds me of that Storage War mess where no one has a clue and think only vidya games = big money.
Frank Cifaldi was talking about the idea of “rare to nerds” games like Stadium Events vs “rare to collectors” because of quirks in a print run along with history.
It’s funny, when we heard about this we were not surprised about the value! So rare! Great video by the way. Enjoyed the history lesson 😁 the video game crash was an interesting time. Fascinating to read up on.
i remember most nintendo games were shrinkwrapped with the gold nintendo seal on the plastic in the late 80s/90s (they used to be kept behind locked glass windows at our local woolco)
While it's cool that such a common game like Super Mario Bros was sold at that price, imagine what sellers are going to think now? Not to mention scalpers and people who make fakes. Awesome video, I had never heard of nor seen the Nintendo stickers.
It wasn't until the late 80s I even heard there was a video game crash, because here in the UK the market was just going from strength to strength at that time.
IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM The National Video Game Museum in Frisco, TX would work. They've already got a NWC cart, although the security for a six figure cartridge would need to be pretty insane.
I owned a retro game store a few years ago with a business partner. Every time I see these stories make it big in the media on Yahoo or something it makes my skin crawl. Here's to all the store owners getting calls from people demanding 100s or dollars for Mario.
Thanks for the history on this. I knew the early release of the NES and how they did it but, didn't know about the seal...very interesting to know. Thanks ! Yes, Mario carts are very, very, very common...I must have 10 or so myself !
Well, that's about right. Rare mint collectibles usually have those price tags. Yeah, it is odd though as rare items have a certain element of design or products or age whereas this has thousands of similars.
I hear that as soon as it sold, the bottom half went through a shredder that had secretly been placed inside the container. The game is now called "Mario Is in the Bin."
Personally i think this is crazy. Even if it was a special cartridge assembled by Miyamoto himself and signed by him, i still think it wouldn't be worth more than a couple hundreds at most. I understand the collecting aspect and all, but still 100 000$ ... way over the top.
Hey Kelsey great information about this I didn't know any of this and ive been selling games for a long time. Just wondering how you even found out about the test market lauch and stickers? Seems like hard information to find out about now. But your looking good and keep up the good work!
Thank you. I’ve seen a dozen news articles on this and none have explained it. Oh, and this is totally off topic, but as someone who was around in 1983 I love the big hair photo from that 1983 newspaper.
