When a copy of the 1987 NES game “The Legend of Zelda” sold for a record $870,000 at the height of the sealed video game boom in July 2021, it appeared likely it would be the best copy to surface at auction any time soon.
It was from the second-earliest print, identified by an “R” symbol next to the “Nintendo Entertainment System” text on the front of the box and graded a Wata 9.0 A. The auction house wrote in its lot description, “Essentially, this copy is the earliest sealed copy one could realistically hope to obtain.”
Just three months later, in October of that same year, an earlier-print copy surfaced at auction. Heritage said in its lot description the game was discovered thanks to the media attention surrounding the July record sale. That copy sold for $705,000.
More than three years after those two sales, those assumptions have once again been proven untrue.
A “Legend of Zelda” game, sealed and graded CGC 9.4 A+ and from the first-print variant is now at auction at Heritage, with bidding surpassing $50,000, including buyer’s premium, with more than two weeks remaining.
It’s part of a newly discovered collection of 36 games, dubbed the “Waterford Collection” by CGC after the town in Michigan where the games surfaced.
According to CGC’s director of video games Kenneth Grower, the collection emerged when a family recently walked into a Waterford video game store looking to sell their games, including the aforementioned Zelda, as well as dozens of other high-grade key titles from the era.
Grower says the family had three kids and would often purchase multiples of each game for the children, an explanation which could hold the answer as to how, all these years later, they had so many sealed, and therefore unplayed, games.
The collection was purchased by the store and sent off to CGC for grading earlier this year.
“I was kind of blown away,” Grower said of first seeing the collection come in for grading.
Now, Heritage’s upcoming Video Games Signature Auction features the newly discovered collection, led by the Zelda.
Another game from the collection selling in the auction is a sticker-sealed first print copy of “Clu Clu Land,” one of around five graded and the first to appear at public auction. Bidding is nearing $20,000, including buyer’s premium.
The record for the game, which is one of the original NES launch titles, is $156,000, set by a later-production Wata 9.4 A+ copy in April 2022.
Illustrating just how rapid the video game market boomed in those years, that same game sold at Heritage barely two years prior for just $15,600 — a tenth of the record sale price.
There is also the single-highest graded sealed copy of “Sqoon,” which is currently at $12,501.25, including buyer’s premium. Grower called “Sqoon” a “unicorn for sealed games.”
Of the condition of the games in the collection, Grower said they were “just about as nice as anything will stay for that amount of time since opened.”
“A lot of these titles are one of only a few copies known sealed, single-digit populations.”
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.