Tech
Rare Super Mario Bros. game sells for a record US$660000 – CTV News
After being forgotten in a desk drawer for almost 35 years, a sealed copy of the Nintendo video game Super Mario Bros. sold at auction on Friday for a whopping US$660,000.
It’s the most ever paid for a video game, according to a news release from Heritage Auctions, which ran the sale.
The Dallas-based auction company said the NES cartridge was purchased as a Christmas gift in 1986, and was untouched until the seller found it earlier this year.
“It stayed in the bottom of my office desk this whole time since the day I bought it,” said the unidentified seller in the release. “I never thought anything about it.”
The unopened game was professionally graded by WataGames and had a score of 9.6/A+, according to the news release, which called it “the finest copy known to have been professionally graded for auction.”
It is also one of the earliest copies of the game to be shrink wrapped instead of having a sticker seal, according to the auction company.
This particular version of the game first went on sale in 1986, but Nintendo changed the packaging in early 1987, so only a relatively small number were sold.
“Since the production window for this copy and others like it was so short, finding another copy from this same production run in similar condition would be akin to looking for single drop of water in an ocean,” said Valarie McLeckie, video games director for Heritage Auctions. “Never say never, but there’s a good chance it can’t be done.”
It wasn’t the only video game that brought in big money at the auction. A 1987 Mega Man cartridge sold for $144,000 and a buyer paid $102,000 for a copy of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! made the same year.
The $660,000 price includes the buyer’s premium and shatters the previous record for a copy of Super Mario Bros. game.
A 1985 copy of the game sold for $114,000 last July, which at the time, was the most ever paid for a video game, according to Heritage, which also handled that sale.
A sealed variant of Super Mario Bros. 3 broke that record in November, selling for $156,000, the company said.
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Britain is in talks with six companies about building gigafactories to produce batteries for electric vehicles (EV), the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing people briefed on the discussions.
Car makers Ford Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co Ltd, conglomerates LG Corp and Samsung, and start-ups Britishvolt and InoBat Auto are in talks with the British government or local authorities about locations for potential factories and financial support, the report added .
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
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EBay will sell its South Korean business to retailer Shinsegae Group and e-commerce firm Naver for about 4 trillion won ($3.6 billion), local newspapers reported on Wednesday.
EBay Korea is the country’s third-largest e-commerce firm with market share of about 12.8% in 2020, according to Euromonitor. It operates the platforms Gmarket, Auction and G9.
Shinsegae, Naver and eBay Korea declined to comment.
Lotte Shopping had also been in the running, the Korea Economic Daily and other newspapers said, citing unnamed investment banking sources.
South Korea represents the world’s fourth largest e-commerce market. Driven by the coronavirus pandemic, e-commerce has soared to account for 35.8% of the retail market in 2020 compared with 28.6% in 2019, according to Euromonitor data.
Shinsegae and Naver formed a retail and e-commerce partnership in March by taking stakes worth 250 billion won in each other’s affiliates.
($1 = 1,117.7000 won)
(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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Canada is set to begin a hotly anticipated auction of the mobile telecommunications bandwidth necessary for 5G rollout, one that was delayed more than a year by the pandemic.
The 3,500 MHz is a spectrum companies need to provide 5G, which requires more bandwidth to expand internet capabilities.The auction, initially scheduled for June 2020, is expected to take several weeks with Canadian government selling off 1,504 licenses in 172 service areas.
Smaller operators are going into the auction complaining that recent regulatory rulings have further tilted the scales in the favour of the country’s three biggest telecoms companies – BCE, Telus and Rogers Communications Inc – which together control around 90% of the market as a share of revenue.
Canadian mobile and internet consumers, meanwhile, have complained for years that their bills are among the world’s steepest. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has threatened to take action if the providers did not cut bills by 25%.
The last auction of the 600 MHz spectrum raised C$3.5 billion ($2.87 billion) for the government.
The companies have defended themselves, saying the prices they charge are falling.
Some 23 bidders including regional players such as Cogeco and Quebec’s Videotron are participating in the process. Shaw Communications did not apply to participate due to a $16 billion takeover bid from Rogers. Lawmakers and analysts have warned that market concentration will intensify if that acquisition proceeds.
In May, after Canada‘s telecoms regulator issued a ruling largely in favour of the big three on pricing for smaller companies’ access to broadband networks, internet service provider TekSavvy Inc withdrew from the auction, citing the decision.
Some experts say the government has been trying to level the playing field with its decision to set aside a proportion of spectrum in certain areas for smaller companies.
Gregory Taylor, a spectrum expert and associate professor at the University of Calgary, said he was pleased the government was auctioning off smaller geographic areas of coverage.
In previous auctions where the license covered whole provinces, “small providers could not participate because they could not hope to cover the range that was required in the license,” Taylor said.
Smaller geographic areas mean they have a better chance of fulfilling the requirements for the license, such as providing service to 90% of the population within five years of the issuance date.
The auction has no scheduled end date, although the federal ministry in charge of the spectrum auction has said winners would be announced within five days of bidding completion.
($1 = 1.2181 Canadian dollars)
(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Vancouver; Editing by David Gregorio)
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