I belong to a local retro gaming group on Facebook, and pretty much like all of them, people often post what they recently picked up. Someone posted a CIB Player's Choice copy of Super Mario World and I immediately noticed the $350.00 price sticker on the top corner of the box. My immediate reaction was, "wow, I hope he was able to talk the seller down from that...that's waaayy overpriced." It turns out that was actually a fair price, maybe even a pretty good deal compared to what it's currently selling for online right now. I literally could not believe my eyes when I saw that it was worth that much, not because I'm somehow not used to how insanely expensive retro games have become, especially in the last 3-years, but because it's frickin Super Mario World.
Super Mario World sold 20-million copies on the SNES, and while i understand it was a common pack in game, it was still sold in high quantities as a standalone release as well. I am aware that the first run of black box copies are harder to find (more on those too in a minute), but the player's choice copies were still being sold in stores long after the pack in version of the SNES was discontinued. I know because i remember seeing this game in stores, and as a collector I've seen it CIB more times than i can count over the years. And let's not forget it's a $20 loose. So what has me scratching my head is how on God's green earth did this game's CIB price shoot up so dramatically? Which youtuber blew the lid off this game's supposed rarity as a CIB game and caused a feverish demand that now has these game selling for $350+ or $#@%ing $750+ for the black box version? Or is this some sort of normie speculation bubble created during the pandemic?
I get how rare games can shoot up in value so quick, hell, we've seen it happen countless times over the years. Or how a slightly uncommon game that has proven to be an overlooked gem can shoot up in price, but this is Super Mario World, one of the best selling, if not the best selling SNES game of all time. Super Metroid, A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy III, Mega Man X, and so many other must have SNES games could never dream of such a dramatic bump despite selling less than Super Mario World. This one just seems super weird to me, with speculation being the primary cause of its surge in price, and not an organic supply and demand situation like what we see with 99% of all other retro games.