An early copy of Super Mario Party has apparently been bought on eBay for $7,100, a purchase made just a few days ahead of the game’s official release date.
Videos by ComicBook.com
In an eBay listing that’s now ended and can’t be viewed (via Nintendo Life) showed that a slightly scuffed-up cartridge that allegedly contained Super Mario Party was found near an airport. The seller shared images of the cartridge in-hand with another that showed the back of the cartridge that had some minor damage, something that the seller admitted to in the listing. Spawn Wave’s video featuring the eBay listing showed these images along with a video from the seller that showed the game to be in working condition as it ran on a Nintendo Switch.
With 81 bids placed on the unreleased copy of Super Mario Party, the price eventually peaked at $7,100, the cost that someone supposedly paid to buy the game. While there’s always a chance that the person who bid that much has no intention of actually paying the amount to get the game early, the total cost sounds like an insane price just to get a game less than two weeks before it officially releases.
Depending on who got the game though, it’s been pointed out that paying that price might not be as big a hit as people think. The eBay listing, if accurate in its claims, means that there’s an early copy of an unreleased game out there, one of Nintendo’s biggest ongoing series at that. While early copies of games like these and others are typically tied to strict embargoes that prevent the distribution of any information Nintendo isn’t ready to make public yet, buying this copy through eBay would mean that there are no strings attached and no embargo in place. For someone who wanted to show off early footage from the game or trickle out information until the game comes out, it could end up being quite the profitable purchase as Twitter user Vito Gesualdi theorized.
To everyone freaking out about the copy of Super Mario Party that went for $7,000 on eBay.
Having early access to a Mario game without an embargo agreement is a huge scoop. A YouTuber could probably get 20k+ new followers off it, for which $7k is not a bad deal. pic.twitter.com/4Yf2SEJgH0
— Vito Gesualdi (@VitoGesualdi) September 25, 2018
Whether the buyer plans to take advantage of that opportunity or not remains to be seen, but they won’t have much longer to do so before the game is fully released.
Super Mario Party is scheduled to release for the Nintendo Switch on Oct. 5.
