Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) — Price Guide & Live Deals

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time shipped on Nintendo 64 in late 1998 and has stayed one of the most actively traded retro N64 carts ever since. The live feed below pulls current eBay listings that match a grey-cart US‑NTSC release, filtered to authentic-claim sellers with a meaningful feedback history. Pick a condition chip — All, Loose, CIB, or Sealed — to scope the listings; the editorial below explains what each tier should actually include and what to verify before buying.

What the Ocarina of Time feed shows

The deals on this page surface the standard grey-cart US release. A few same-name siblings get filtered out because they're easy to confuse at a glance but trade in their own markets:

• The Collector's Edition Gold cartridge (an early-launch premium variant in a gold-tinted shell), which sits in its own price tier and has its own buyer audience.
• Master Quest (a GameCube bonus disc, not an N64 cart).
• Ocarina of Time 3D (a Nintendo 3DS remake — different game, different hardware).

Asking prices in the live feed reflect what sellers are asking in this snapshot. Actual sold values can run lower (especially after offer negotiation) or higher (auction finals on rare variants).

Ocarina of Time: loose vs CIB vs sealed

Loose is the most common bucket — just the cartridge, no box or manual. For Ocarina of Time the loose grey cart is a high-volume item; expect dozens of listings in any given snapshot. The asking-price spread between a clean, tested, label-intact loose cart and a "rough labels, tested working" cart is usually meaningful — the feed mixes both, so scan title text and the seller's photos before buying.

CIB ("Complete In Box") for an N64 cart of this era should mean: the outer cardboard box, the cardboard inner tray that holds the cart, the original instruction manual, and the standard Nintendo paperwork inserts of the era (consumer-precautions card, Nintendo Power subscription card, registration material). Real CIB listings show all of these in the photos. Box-and-manual-only listings (where the cart isn't included) are filtered out — but always read the title and photos to confirm the cart is in there.

Sealed for a 1998 N64 cart almost always means a third-party graded slab — WATA, VGA, CGC, or PSA — because raw never-opened copies of a 27+ year-old cart are vanishingly rare and difficult to authenticate without a grader. Graded sealed asking prices on Ocarina of Time start in the four figures and climb steeply with grade. The Sealed chip on this page may show no current matches when the graded-sealed market is thin in a given snapshot; the price table below still summarizes the historical asking range.

ROM revision tells: v1.0 vs v1.1 vs v1.2

Sellers sometimes call out the ROM revision in their title (V 1.0, V1.0, V 1.1, V 1.2). The earliest US production run is v1.0, and a portion of the collector market prices it at a small premium over later revisions. The revision is identifiable from the in-game version readout or from cart-label printing details — if the asking price is meaningfully above the typical loose tier and the seller doesn't say which revision it is, message and ask before paying the premium.

Spotting Ocarina of Time reproductions and bootlegs

Ocarina of Time is one of the most-bootlegged N64 carts, both because of its visibility and because of how many emulator-friendly ROM dumps exist. The most reliable physical tells:

• The cartridge shell color and label print quality. Authentic 1998 carts use the standard grey N64 shell with a sharp, full-color label that has crisp small text on the manufacturer-info bar at the bottom. Bootleg labels often have noticeably blurry small text, off-color background, or label edges that peel because the adhesive is wrong.
• The cartridge weight and shell seam fit. Authentic Nintendo carts are tight-tolerance — the shell halves meet cleanly, with no visible seam gap. A loose-fitting shell with a wavy seam is a reshell or a bootleg.
• The security screw on the back. Authentic N64 carts use a specific Nintendo security screw (not a standard Phillips head). A Phillips screw on the back means the cart has been opened — by a previous owner doing internal cleaning, or by a reseller doing a reshell, or by a bootlegger. Verify against a high-resolution photo of a known-authentic N64 cart before buying any listing showing a Phillips back screw.
• Title-screen behavior. Authentic carts boot to the Nintendo logo, then the "From Nintendo" splash, then the Zelda title screen. Bootlegs sometimes skip the Nintendo splash, show garbled colors, or fail to boot on real N64 hardware (working only on emulators or flash carts).

Sub-market "Brand New" listings priced in the $25–$50 range for a 1998 cart are almost always dropshipped replicas regardless of how confidently the seller claims authenticity — authentic Ocarina of Time at any condition above "Good" loose does not exist at that price point in this snapshot.

Ocarina of Time verification checklist by condition

Loose

• Label edges should be flat, not curling; small text on the manufacturer-info bar should be sharp under zoom.
• "Tested working" should mean the seller can confirm boot + save creation + load — message and ask if "tested" is the only word in the description.
• "Pins cleaned" / "new battery" / "refurbished" in the description means the cart has been opened. That's a normal reseller cleanup workflow, but for collector-grade purchases it's a discount factor — and "refurbished" specifically tends to mean replacement boards or reshells, which the feed filters out from the standard-condition pool.

CIB

• The box should show all four sides clearly in photos. Look for crushed corners, water damage on the cardboard tray, color fade on the spine, and rips at the box-flap edges.
• The manual should be photographed open — back-cover wear and water staining are the common defects.
• The inner cardboard tray needs to be present and matching. Reseller-fabricated trays exist; the original tray has a specific gloss-white finish and Nintendo printing.
• Verify the cart in the photos matches the box's expected revision (grey shell, standard N64 label artwork).

Sealed (graded)

• The grading slab label should be readable in the listing photos. Verify grade, certification number, and condition note.
• Cross-check the cert number against the grader's online lookup if you're spending into the four figures.
• Be especially careful of acrylic-protector listings that look like graded slabs but aren't — graded slabs are tamper-sealed plastic with the grader's serial on the front.

Ocarina of Time buying gotchas

• Bundle listings where Ocarina of Time is paired with Majora's Mask or another Zelda title are filtered out — they price as bundles and skew the per-cart asking-price view. If you want the bundle, search for it separately.
• The "Hard to find" Brand New repro pattern — multiple sibling sellers list the same generic title text at a sub-market Brand New price. None of these are authentic. The feed excludes Brand New for the standard-grey-cart pool to keep these out.
• Auto-translated international listings with bracketed adjective prefixes ([Good Condition], [Many accessories]) are typically Japanese-origin sellers shipping internationally. They're filtered out by region rules but occasionally slip through if the seller mis-categorizes; the bracket prefix at the start of the title is the tell.
• Reshelled / aftermarket-shell listings — sellers sometimes put an authentic Ocarina of Time board into a fresh aftermarket shell to ship a "cleaner-looking" cart. These are filtered out by reshell keywords; if you see "new shell" or "custom shell" in a title, that's the signal.