Nintendo PlayStation Console Sells for Over $300,000 at Auction

Credit: Heritage Auctions

The new owner must be quite the diehard collector.

A prototype of the Nintendo PlayStation, one of the last video game consoles that never sold on the market, was sold for $360,000 at an auction over the weekend. Greg McLemore, founder of Pets.com and Toys.com, won the bid and took home the console, which is one of only 200 prototypes created from a 1991 partnership between Sony and Nintendo that never came to fruition.

The unit is basically a Super NES with a CD-ROM drive. Valerie McLeckie of Heritage Auctions told CNN that it is believed that the other 199 prototypes were destroyed when the deal between Nintendo and Sony fell through.

The two video game giants announced their partnership in 1991, but after producing 200 video game units, the deal fell through. Afterwards, Sony focused on its own line of consoles and in 1994, released its first PlayStation.

The one Nintendo PlayStation prototype was discovered by Terry Diebold in a box of stuff that was once owned by former Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Olaf Olafsson. Diebold used to work with Olafsson at Advanta Corporation before the company went bankrupt, leaving many items to end up at a private auction.

McLemore plans on adding the console to his collection of games, magazines and art, and hopes to create a permanent museum.

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