I've seen them sell for a lot more than that even, I'm lucky I still have my copy from when me and my brother were little.

I remember, as a child, seeing a copy of the game new for 80 Canadian dollars. I was curious to know what the game was about, especially since I didn't know what RPG stood for at the time. Anyway, I later played through the game using emulation and I thought it was okay but nothing special. I preferred the Paper Mario games because I found the concept more interesting. SMRPG could have easily been a Final Fantasy game, but instead of stars, there'd be crystals.

I've never played Paper Mario/etc. but they look like they automatically have better gameplay than mario rpg. But the style of the later games always looked so trying to be old-school, like I'm surprised they didn't include those lines coming off of mario when he jumps ( http://www.galeon.com/download-a-saco-2k2/SuperMarioBrosPAL.jpg ) but yeah I thought the style of mario rpg was a million times better, it feels more like claymation than 3D animation, I dunno if that was intentional or not but it reminds me of like RUSSIAN CARTOONS or something (dunno what this is but this came up and it totally is what I'm talking about http://img.youtube.com/vi/fvpR0LqYi8o/0.jpg)

post rules since i have been bothered about this for the longest time and i had no idea what that style was called. yeah it really does remind me of russian animations, it's really cool.
also SMB2 is pretty much my favourite Mario because of the atmosphere and weird things in there, mostly because it was designed to be that arabian nights or whatever game. it's the best kidgame and i'm gonna force my son/daughter play it.