A sealed cartridge of the 1987 video game The Legend of Zelda set a world record as the world’s most expensive video game when it sold Friday for $870,000 at Heritage Auctions.
The sale shatters the previous world record set April 2, 2021 when a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for $660,000, also at Heritage Auctions
“I had a lot of confidence in this game, and, yet, I still feel like the reality of today’s bidding exceeded my vision of how it would play out,” Heritage Auctions Video Games Specialist Valarie McLeckie said. “Making history is never an easy thing. I’m just really proud we got to be part of this yet again.”
It is widely believed that the copy sold Friday is one of just two sealed “NES TM” copies graded by Wata. It is from a variant of the game that was produced for just a few months in late 1987 before it was replaced by the “Rev-A” variant in early 1988. The “NES R” variant was preceded by just one other variant: the “NES TM” variant, which is the true first production run.
