This is a distribution box for The Legend of Zelda for the NES, European English version, with code NES-ZL-GPS. It is an extremely rare item and very difficult to come across. The cardboard box has the game code on the flaps and displays the text “NES P ZL The Legend of Zelda 6pcs GPS” on all four sides and on the top. It also includes a silver Nintendo logo seal.
This box is open and is neither sealed nor new. I purchased it empty and later managed to complete it with some games, but even empty it is an extremely rare piece.
Below, I will share a personal anecdote about how I obtained this box and the history behind it. At the end of 2021, I traveled to Madrid and visited Juan Santos, who had previously worked as a technician for the company that distributed the NES in Spain, Spaco S.A., as well as for Club Nintendo Spain. Juan Santos owned a shop called TecVia, where he bought and sold second-hand retro video games and consoles. He also carried out console modifications and even modifications to some games.
More than two decades ago, Juan Santos sold hundreds of leftover copies of The Legend of Zelda in his shop. When Spaco S.A. lost the exclusive Nintendo distribution rights, he purchased many of these remaining games and sold them little by little in his store. During my trip to Madrid, I spoke with him and asked whether he still had any The Legend of Zelda editions left or any distribution boxes. He told me he had nothing left, that everything had been sold many years ago. His wife, who was also in the shop, jokingly mentioned that the only thing left might be a few empty boxes in the warehouse, since everything else was gone.
I told his wife that I was also interested in an empty box and asked her to please bring one from the warehouse so I could see it. She was surprised, as she never imagined someone would be willing to pay for a cardboard box. At that moment, I assumed she would bring out a Spanish Spaco S.A. distribution box, which are very simple boxes printed on only two sides, one showing the game code and title, and the other showing the distributor information. To my surprise, she came back with this European version box. I could hardly believe it, since the distribution of the European Version (GPS) units in Spain was very limited, and I had been incredibly lucky. There it was, that legendary box printed on all five sides with the Zelda codes. I had never seen another one like it before, not even in photos. For me, it was something completely new, a true gem I had just discovered.
As for the price, fortunately or unfortunately, the well-known seller racaal2, who has been selling brand new and sealed Spanish copies of The Legend of Zelda for years, had an empty Spanish distribution box listed on eBay for 400€. Juan Santos had seen that listing and told me he thought that price was outrageous. He then said, “Would you give me 200€, which is half of what racaal is asking?” I thought about it for a moment and decided to buy it. At the time, it seemed a bit expensive for an empty box, but in reality, I was buying a true bargain, one of those items that I would never see for sale again.
Since the box was empty, I completed it with some sealed European version copies of The Legend of Zelda and other opened units from the Spanish and Portuguese distributions. Originally, this box contained six unopened units, but they were not factory sealed. The seals were applied later by distributors and are not part of the original item, but I show them in these images so you can see how it would have originally looked.
Europe
