Go check your closet. Like, right now.

Wow, someone just paid a hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars for a video game cartridge. And hang on, because I know what you're thinking: "How can someone drop such an exorbitant amount of money on something like a video game in the middle of a pandemic and resultant economic spiral?" Right?

"You know dah-ling, between the engine noise of this private
jet and the clinking of our champaign flutes, I can hardly hear
 the economic plight of the vast majority of Americans!"

-Rich people

I can think of no better argument for wealth
re-distribution than the sentence "A dentist
spent a million dollars on NES games."

But that's only because you didn't know that this is an extremely rare sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 and-Huh? Deja vu? No, this happened on Friday. You might be thinking of the prototype copy of Mario 3 that sold for thirty thousand back in September? Or maybe the sealed copy of the original Super Mario Bros. that went for a reckless one hundred and fourteen thousand? Or maybe the dentist who got together with some friends and spent a million dollars on forty sealed early NES games? This is another, different, wealthy person paying a preposterous amount for a thirty-year old game cartridge at auction. In fact, this is now the world record holder for the most expensive single game.

There were many factors that led to the French
revolution but most historians point to extravagant
prices paid for collectible video games.

But why? The obvious answer is that there is a level of wealth at which a person looses all sense of perspective and simply indulges in whims and frivolousness while the masses starve. It's how you get Bastille Day. But the less obvious answer is that Mario's glove is partially obscured by the game's title. No, really, the first run of SMB3 had the "Bros." in the title alighted on the left while later runs revised the cover art to put it on the right. They're called "Left Bros." cartridges and they sell for way more than the more common revision which go for between ten and forty thousand. Which, I mean, c'mon

Anyway, this particular one was sitting in someone's closet for all this time which accounts for the near perfect condition. And from this I think we can all learn a valuable lesson: don't throw anything out. Ever. Hold on to everything. All of it. Let your stuff own you. Because you never know if something will be valuable to someone, somewhere, someday. 

Another lesson we might glean however, is that collecting is absurd and anyone
who spends this kind of money on a game just because of the rare box art probably
 shouldn't be allowed to control that much of the finite wealth in the universe.