In the year 1989 Topps, the company best known for their sports cards, released two sets of cards based on popular Nintendo games. These games were Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, Double Dragon, Super Mario Bros, and of course The Legend of Zelda.
Now, many years ago, I was shopping at a local used game store called Game Swap and they had several boxes of these cards. And they were still in their original wrapping which is even more incredible. I was a big Nintendo fan and they were only 50 cents a pack so I picked up 2 packs just for fun. Inside I got 2 Zelda cards and 1 Zelda sticker which you can see below.
Now for the interesting part. As you can see, each card as several scratch off sections. These cards were actually part of a game. By collecting all of the cards of a series people were able to scratch off the sections. If 3 swords were scratched off then Link was allowed to continue to the next screen. However, if 3 fireballs were revealed then you lost.
Each pack of cards also had a couple of collectible stickers inside. One the back of each sticker was a tip or piece of advice for a popular Nintendo game at the time. Here is one of the Zelda stickers that I own.