Does 宝 have its own history separate from 寶? I was trying to figure out the characters for Sapporo, the Japanese beer, the other day and found:


  七宝


was one of the translations for it. 

My initial reaction was to search 「七寶」 in my Japanese dictionary, which returned nothing(!); searching 「七宝」 though returned


  しっぽう, しちほう【七宝】
  
  noun
  
  
  the seven treasures (gold, silver, pearls, agate, crystal, coral, lapis lazuli)
  noun, の-adjective
  cloisonne ware (abbreviation) (see also: 七宝焼)
  


I figured Japanese would use 「寶」 over 「宝」.

Even in Hong Kong Sapporo is called 「七宝」 and not 「七寶」.

I don't really get it.


Does 「宝」 have its own history separate from 「寶」?
As Stan hinted at, 宝 is a Japanese Shinjitai character. It is also a simplified Chinese character, but that's coincidental.

Perhaps this fact isn't so well known, but PRC aren't the only ones that performed simplification to Chinese characters - it is merely the most well known and widespread. Japan attempted their own simplification process, but theirs was less extensive and less radical.

Therefore, to the uninitiated, it may seem that Japanese Kanji is identical to Traditional Chinese. But there are simplified forms that are not as simple as PRC's Simplified Chinese, e.g.


  廣: (Shinjitai: 広), (Simplifed Chinese: 广)


And those that have been simplified differently, e.g.:


  圓 (Shinjitai: 円), (Simplified Chinese: 圆)


And forms that happen to be the same; 宝 is an example but so are 台 and 国.

Although the two simplification systems happened independently, may simplified characters are based on cursive forms so it's no surprise that there are many characters that are the same between the two systems.