First print — black label, M41-00028

Start with the band across the top. A black Xbox band is the original release; a green Platinum Hits banner is the budget reissue. Collectors call the first one "black label", and on an opened copy that is the main box tell there is.

Then the numbers. Item number M41-00028, UPC 805529792234.

On a sealed copy, the orange seal is the tell. The launch printing was shrink-wrapped with an orange "DO NOT SELL BEFORE 11/09/04" sticker sealing the wrap — collectors write it DNSB. Later printings did not carry it, so on an unopened standard copy it is the clearest first-print marker this game has, and a sealed box without it is a later print.

Two cautions. It is a seal on the shrinkwrap, so it tells you nothing about an opened copy — the row below on codes is for those. And a Try Out Xbox LIVE promotion sticker turns up on the wrap as well; that one ran beyond the launch printing and proves nothing on its own.

What is missing, and worth photographing. No date code has been recorded for this box in any source read for this entry. Two numbers around it suggest where to look: the Limited Collector's Edition cover is dated 0904 Part No. X10-60982 in a Redump verification listing, and the Mexican standard box carries Part No. X10-86839. So the North American standard box should read 0904 or later with an X10-8xxxx part number — but that is a prediction, not a record.

The disc places nothing. Redump holds a single USA dump, serial MS-100, with no revisions, covering the standard release, the Limited Collector's Edition and the European Classics reissue. A loose Halo 2 disc cannot be put in a print run at all.

Halo 2 sold 2.4 million copies and took up to US$125 million in its first 24 hours, which Wikipedia records as the highest-grossing entertainment release to that date. So first-print copies are not scarce in any absolute sense, and rarity stays Unknown.

The orange seal is a reporter's observation, not a catalog field, and it is the best thing on this page. The reporter has handled these and states that the launch printing carried it and later printings did not. Nothing read in the public catalogs records the sticker at all, let alone its colour — marketplace listings describe a "do not sell before" sticker in green and in red as well as orange, which is either listing error, a different sticker, or a different game. The colour here follows the reporter.

This record is otherwise thinner than the Halo 1 one on purpose. The box codes that order the Halo 1 prints so cleanly have not been collected for Halo 2, so for an opened copy the only honest statement is the black band and the item number.

Most wanted photograph on this page: the bottom of the back cover, showing the four digits in front of the part number. One picture starts the print chain. A shot of the orange seal in place would settle the colour on the record as well.

Source: Desk research across public catalogs and disc databases — Brandon Green (from VGCollect, Redump, Halopedia, Wikipedia and PriceCharting, October 2026).