On Friday, July 9, Heritage Auctions announced that a sealed, 9.0 rated copy of The Legend of Zelda for NES sold for a whopping $870,000, breaking the world record for the most expensive video game ever sold at auction (previously held by a rare, sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. that went for $660,000 at auction only three months ago).
The opening bid for this copy of The Legend of Zelda started at $110,000; the price started so high because the game was part of an early production run in late-1987 dubbed “NES R,” which preceded the game’s wider production run in early 1988, which was dubbed “REV-A.” REV-A’s production run coincided with the massive boom in popularity of the NES in America, and both NES R and REV-A copies feature the foiled gold cartridge casing.
The world record set by the $870,000 sale of The Legend of Zelda lasted only 48 hours after it was quickly eclipsed by the auction of yet another sealed copy of a beloved Nintendo game: $1.56 million for Super Mario 64. While the price doesn’t seem to be the result of the game being part of a special or rare print, it does boast an uncommon Wata Games rating of 9.8 out of 10. For a 25-year-old game, that’s about as close to perfect and pristine condition as one might find for a game of this age.
Source: Ars Technica