San Francisco, Aug 9 (IANS): A 36-year old sealed copy of vintage Super Mario Bros game has been sold for $2 million on a collectibles site called Rally, breaking the record for the most expensive video game ever sold.

The sale prize of the 1985 game broke the record set less than a month ago, when a never-opened copy of Super Mario 64 went for $1.56 million at auction, reports The New York Times.

Rally bought the Super Mario Bros game for $140,000 last April. An anonymous buyer has now purchased it for $2 million.

"Demand for collectibles has surged during the pandemic, along with many other forms of investment, as people stuck at home look for ways to spend their money," the report noted.

In early July, a 1987 Legend of Zelda game cartridge was sold for $870,000.

Last year, a copy of Super Mario Bros went for $114,000 at an auction and in November, a copy of Super Mario Bros 3 was sold for $156,000.

Super Mario is a platform game series created by Nintendo based on Mario. Alternatively called the Super Mario Bros series or simply the Mario series, it is the central series of the greater Mario franchise.

The first game in the series, Super Mario Bros was released in 1985.

More than 380 million copies of Super Mario games have been sold worldwide, making it the fourth bestselling video game series, behind the larger Mario series, the puzzle series Tetris, and first-person shooter series Call of Duty.

Rally is a platform for buying and selling equity shares in collectible assets.