An Unopened Copy of “Legend of Zelda” Just Sold For $870,000

The copy in question was a rare variant of the game

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Link figurine from Legend of Zelda with shop staff inside Nintendo Tokyo store in Shibuya.
Stanislav Kogiku/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

There’s been a lot of talk this summer about a forthcomng sequel to the video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. That people are excited about this isn’t too surprising — after all, the Legend of Zelda games are beloved by millions who have played them over the years, and the franchise as a whole has made close to $4 billion over the years. But there’s another Legend of Zelda story in the news right now, and one might say that it has — pardon the pun — a very literal link to the past.

ABC News report that an unopened copy of The Legend of Zelda, dating back to 1987, recently sold at auction for $870,000. The sale was conducted through Dallas’s Heritage Auctions, who specializes in the selling of collectibles.

This wasn’t simply a case of a never-opened copy of the game selling for a substantial amount, however. Heritage Auctions’s listing for the game notes that it is a variant which “was only produced for a few months in late 1987 before it was ultimately replaced by the ‘Rev-A’ variant in early 1988.”

The game was sold as part of Heritage Auctions’ Video Games Signature Auction. As of this writing, what is perhaps even more notable than the rarity of this edition of Legend of Zelda and the high price it commanded was the fact that one game sold for even more money. That honor goes to a sealed copy of Super Mario 64, which sold for just over $1.5 million.

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