Greed is still good.

A rare, 14-inch, bronze prototype of the iconic “Charging Bull” statue in the Financial District — the symbol of unbridled capitalism — sold at auction Saturday for a beefy $37,500.

The winner got not only a maquette-sized bovine, but a New York tale.

Under the cover of darkness on Friday, Dec. 15, 1989, sculptor Arturo di Modica left a Christmas present for the Big Apple under the New York Stock Exchange holiday tree: An 18-foot, 3¹/₂-ton bronze bull, that a Post story playfully called “the biggest stock transfer in Wall Street history.”

Three years in the crafting, di Modica’s stately steer “was not only a symbol of hope for the return to a bull market, but also a larger gesture to celebrate the dynamic spirit of New York City,” according to the model’s auction lot description.

Di Modica, who transported the mammoth statue on a flatbed truck, had no permit when he deposited the bronze beast.

The guerilla installation, to the chagrin of Wall Streeters, was that day “corralled by urban cowboys, who unceremoniously dumped him in a police warehouse in Queens,” The Post reported.

Cops claimed the steer was “blocking traffic” and the “community doesn’t want it.”

New Yorkers cried “Bull!”

The next day’s front page of The Post snorted, “Bah, Humbug! N.Y. Stock Exchange grinches can’t bear Christmas-gift bull.”

The Italian-born di Modica, who spent $300,000 of his own money on the monument, called NYSE officials “heartless scrooges.”

Mayor Ed Koch and Parks Commissioner Henry Stern ultimately arranged for the gift to become “a public monument at Bowling Green, where it still serves today as a Wall Street talisman,” the lot trumpets.

“As di Modica was solving the engineering feat of his monumental Wall Street Charging Bull figure, he made a series of 10 maquette-size bulls to work out design, massing and foundry issues,” according to the lot.

The auctioned prototype had been purchased from di Modica in 1988 by fellow sculptor Leon Hariton.

The two “first crossed paths working on bronze pours at the Domenico Ranieri Art Foundry in Manhattan, and they shared a decades-long friendship,” according to the Dallas-based Heritage, which staged the auction.

It’s unclear who bought the prototype — or where the other nine would up.