Arguably the most valuable IP that hasn't yet appeared on the big screen, the Legend of Zelda is finally coming to a movie theater near you during the summer of 2027. Considering that the Super Mario Bros. Movie was one of the biggest hits at the box office in 2023 grossing a worldwide total of $1.36 billion, it's no surprise that a live-action The Legend of Zelda movie is currently in development, and expectations are high. Thankfully, Nintendo is heavily involved in the production of the movie with Sony Pictures Entertainment -- even the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto is heavily involved in the film’s production.
Sony has hired a director, Wes Ball, best known for directing 2024's well-received Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes film. And actors for the leading roles were announced earlier this summer with Benjamin Evan Ainsworth cast as Link, and Bo Bragason as the eponymous Zelda.
Considering the hype that is just starting to build for this film, it may come as no surprise that a high-grade copy of the video game that kicked everything off for the franchise -- 1987's The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) -- recently realized an enormous final bid of $300,000 on Heritage Auctions a few months ago:
This sale currently sits at the top of GoCollect's Video Games Chartbusters list and is the highest publicly recorded video game sale during the past year. (Editor’s Note: On September 13th, a copy of Donkey Kong (5-Screw) sold at Goldin Auctions for $370,880. GoCollect is in the process of updating our database to include this sale, along with others that were not initially captured.)
This game is iconic. Instantly recognizable to anyone The Legend of Zelda for the NES, released in 1986 in Japan and 1987 in the U.S., is one of the most important and influential video games in history. Developed and published by Nintendo, with Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka leading development and Koji Kondo composing the music, it established many conventions for the action-adventure genre, including the open-world, non-linear gameplay that is still used in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. This game sold over 6.5 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the NES’s best-selling titles and established The Legend of Zelda as one of Nintendo’s flagship franchises, alongside Super Mario Brothers.
Even the color of its cartridge -- gold -- was iconic. At a time when all of the cartridges for the NES were gray, the metallic gold cartridge was instantly recognizable by most kids who grew up during the 1980s:
This CGC 9.4 copy that sold for $300,000 from the "Waterford Collection," a newly discovered "named collection" of 36 games named after the town in Michigan where the collection first became publicly known. While "named collections" generally aren't considered to be as valuable as "pedigree collections" (and therefore don't have the prized CGC gold label), named collections are still significant because they're typically valuable collections from a single collector.
This Waterford Collection became publicly known when a family walked into a video game store to sell their sealed video games which included this high-grade first edition copy of The Legend of Zelda. Allegedly, the family had three children and the parents bought a copy of each game for each of their children which resulted in the family owning many sealed unused games. The store purchased the collection and sent it to CGC for grading.
I hope the family received a fair price for this valuable collection considering the Zelda game alone sold for $300,000.
This very impressive sale actually doesn't even come close to the highest sale of all-time for The Legend of Zelda. As some of you may remember, at the very height of the collectibles boom, this WATA 9.0 copy sold for an unbelievable $870,000:
But of course, this occurred at the very height of the pandemic-fueled collectibles boom of 2021; if this WATA 9.0 came up for sale again, it would most likely sell for about a third as much.
