Shareholders of a Super Mario Bros. game on fractional memorabilia platform Rally are poised to collect what is the believed to be the greatest return in the short life of fractional collectible history.
Rally officials confirmed they received an offer from an individual to buy the Super Mario Bros. sealed game, graded by WATA as a 9.8 with an A seal, for $2 million on August 3. Net of taxes, shareholders — should they accept the deal — would split $1.61 million.
On August 6, the company officially announced it accepted the offer. Original investors who got in on IPO last year receive a 973.6 percent gain on their shares.
Rally originally offered shares of the game at a valuation of $150,000 last August. Shares of the game last traded at a market cap of $690,000.
“We were ahead of the video game trend when we launched this on our platform a year ago,” said Rally CEO George Leimer. “More importantly, our users were also ahead of the curve, and they saw the opportunity to get a piece of history that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to access. Now they're potentially part of a record transaction — not just for a video game, but for a return on a fractional investments in a collectible.”
The offer comes on the heels of a Super Mario game on the N64 platform selling for $1.56 million in a Heritage Auctions sale last month, an all-time record in the sealed video game category.
A 9.6 A+ seal Super Mario Bros. of the same game owned by Rally shareholders sold for $660,000 in a Heritage Auctions sale in April.
Rally shareholders have until Thursday evening to approve or reject the offer.
