A rare sticker-sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. just sold for $3 million

A sealed second-production copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES that was called "the most significant video game ever offered at auction" sold on Friday for $3 million. The game has been sitting untouched in a box with a launch edition NES Control Deck console — in the original packaging with the plastic still intact — for the last 40 years, according to Heritage Auctions . What makes this particular copy so special is that it sports an unbroken glossy sticker seal, which was introduced in 1986 for a brief time before Nintendo switched to shrink-wrapping its games.

Only three second-production copies with the gloss sticker format are known to exist, according to the auction house, and this is the best among them, graded PSA 9.6 A++. "This specific variant has never appeared in a public auction in sealed condition, underscoring just how elusive it is," according to the Heritage Auctions listing.

Because these games weren't protected by plastic, finding an example in such good condition decades after its release is a rarity. The game and the console it was bundled with are from the Los Angeles test market era, in the early days of Nintendo's expansion into the US. "In many ways," the auction house wrote, "it represents the closest a collector can come to owning the very moment Super Mario Bros. transformed console video games from a struggling novelty into a permanent part of cultural history."