Sticker shock at the rumored price of the Nintendo Switch 2? You’re not alone. Many gamers have raised eyebrows at the idea of shelling out a few hundred bucks for a handheld console. But a recent online sale involving a dusty prototype could change your perspective—and maybe even make the Switch 2 feel like a bargain.
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A prototype console that sold for $2,000
Some people collect rare coins. Others? They hunt down prototype gaming hardware from the early testing days of consoles like the Steam Deck—and they’re willing to pay handsomely for it.
This week, a pre-release model of the Steam Deck was sold on eBay for a cool $2,000, even though the device was never meant for public use. The seller originally asked for $3,000, but someone still took the plunge at the reduced price. Why? Because this wasn’t just any used handheld—it was an early development prototype from Valve’s archives.
Despite the high price tag, this unit isn’t exactly cutting-edge. It runs on an AMD Picasso APU—a processor from 2019—and features 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. Not terrible specs for the time, but hardly impressive today. And to make things even more interesting, it didn’t even come with SteamOS installed.
Not much power under the hood—but lots of nostalgia
To a casual buyer, this prototype might seem like a sluggish handheld PC with outdated internals. But for collectors, it’s a piece of gaming history. Valve built dozens of these early units while developing the final Steam Deck, which launched in 2022. Some were used internally for hardware testing; others were sent to third-party developers to ensure compatibility with popular games.
The exact development phase of this particular prototype is unclear, but it appears to be one of the more iconic models. Back in 2022, Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais shared a photo of a nearly identical unit on social media, noting with a touch of nostalgia that it “had about half the GPU power of the final Steam Deck.”
In that sense, it’s less about performance and more about preserving the evolution of a major gaming device. This isn’t a console you’d play on—it’s one you’d put in a glass case.
The niche but growing market for console prototypes
Believe it or not, there’s a dedicated market for console prototypes, often populated by die-hard collectors, game historians, and former developers. These buyers aren’t looking for performance—they’re after rare pieces that represent pivotal moments in tech history.
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What’s unusual about this Steam Deck prototype is that it’s not from the ‘80s or ‘90s—it’s from a console released just three years ago. That’s practically yesterday in gaming terms. And because the Steam Deck is often considered a hybrid between a PC and a console, its collector value may only grow as handheld PC gaming continues to expand.
Will we ever hear from the person who bought this quirky piece of tech? Possibly. Collectors sometimes go public with teardown videos or deep dives. For now, the listing has disappeared, the money has changed hands, and the Switch 2 suddenly doesn’t seem so expensive after all.