Finally, after three heavy weeks of bidding, the Heritage Auctions listing for the only known functional Nintendo PlayStation closed with a winning bid of $300,000, or $380,000 with the “buyer’s premium” fee. The seller claims there are exactly 200 Nintendo PlayStation prototype consoles, with the other 199 that have yet to be discovered. Read more for a video and additional information.
As for the condition of this one, it loads standard Super Famicom cartridges and the included “data cartridge” that communicates with the system to boot compatible CD-ROMs. Unfortunately, the winning bidder most likely will be not able to code and boot prototype software using the console’s working CD-ROM drive.
At one time, this particular unit was owned by the founder, first president, and first chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. Olaf Olafsson. Olaf eventually left Sony to join Advanta Corporation, and became its president in 1998. A little over a year later, Olaf left Advanta to join Time Warner—but he left his Nintendo PlayStation prototype behind at Advanta. Roughly around this time, Advanta filed for bankruptcy and began gathering up everything in their corporate office to sell at auction. As the story goes, the Nintendo PlayStation prototype was grouped together with some miscellaneous items that [were] boxed up with a group lot, the contents of which were veiled,” according to the auction description.
