Earlier this week, somebody put up what was believed to be a prototype of Nintendo’s Tremendous Famicom console for public sale. Such a uncommon piece of gaming historical past may very nicely have offered for a excessive worth however, forward of the public sale’s Could 12 finish date, the prototype has now been pulled, and nobody is aware of why.

As noticed by Kotaku, the prototype is not listed on Yahoo Japan. Proper earlier than it was eliminated, although, Kotaku was in a position to seize a screenshot of the itemizing, which reveals that the public sale ended with zero bids. That is fairly unusual since bids for the prototype had been skyrocketing. After I final checked, it was going for a number of thousand {dollars}, however Kotaku experiences the bids shot as much as a number of lots of of hundreds of {dollars}, earlier than quickly crossing the $3 million mark.

Given it ended at zero bids, it doesn’t look like the merchandise was offered to anybody. So, what occurred? Whereas there’s no definitive reply, VGC’s Andy Robinson has urged it’s due to rip-off bids, that means individuals had been inserting bids (or utilizing bots to take action) with no intention of really spending the cash and artificially elevating the value. By comparability, a prototype of a Nintendo Sony hybrid console solely went for a ‘mere’ $360,000 (by way of CNN). That console by no means noticed the sunshine of the day because of an notorious falling out between Nintendo and Sony, so it’s considerably laborious to think about individuals could be prepared to pay greater than eight instances as a lot for a prototype of a console that truly did come out.

On the time of writing, there’s additionally no approach of figuring out when or if the Tremendous Famicom prototype shall be put again up for public sale. Though there’s a dialogue available about whether or not this merchandise is real or not. It definitely seems to be genuine at a primary look, and does resemble how the Tremendous Famicom seemed in 90s magazines earlier than it launched (as famous in this Tweet), however we’d want an professional historian to get their palms on it at the start. Regardless of the case, it’s price retaining an eye fixed out ought to the public sale ever pop again up. Hopefully, not solely will the prototype be the actual deal, however somebody will be capable of purchase it after which donate it to a museum or one thing for the sake of posterity.