Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Ex-Sega employee reveals prototype Staurn console hardware revison that he's been sitting on for the past fourteen years! And hours later the only other known Pluto surfaces.

Breaking news Pluto reveal!
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/sh ... Sega-Pluto

Second Pluto Surfaces:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/ ... _owns_one/

And owner of the second Pluto annouced he intends to sell his on Ebay now knowing how insanely rare it is.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaRXP4TgBmg

I'm just stunned by all this. To summarize, apparently SoA and SoE were again wasting money by collaborating on a revised Saturn console that would have the NetLink built-in, but scrapped it so fast when SoJ announced the development of the Dreamcast that scarecely even their own employees knew Pluto had been created.

Owner 1, the ex-SoA employee got his for free when he left/quit/got fired from Sega (he implies he was fired). Said it appeared on his desk one day and time passed with no one ever coming back to claim it or ask about it, so when his employment ended he took it home with him.

Owner 2 found his at a California flea market... for $1.

This is just so incredible.

Tweeg wrote:Owner 2 found his at a California flea market... for $1.

Where's H-Man? He hails from Stockton, where this Pluto was found!

Excellent links here ! Pluto seems to be a fantastic Saturn prototype

Amazing that this piece of Sega history remained hidden for so long. It's really a perfect example of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing, a very sad pattern in Sega's history.

I saw a headline today that said the Pluto put up for sale on eBay didn't sell. Apparently the buyer backed out of paying.

Thoul wrote:Apparently the buyer backed out of paying.

The cynic in me was sure this was going to happen. I don't think eBay was the proper auction platform for an almost one-of-a-kind collectible. I'm sure there are auction houses where only registered/verified(?) (I may not be using the correct terminology here) buyers are allowed to participate.

It is quite common for those rarities to be "sold" on eBay, then the buyer not paying. They should limit the participation of people with a certain verified reputation on eBay auctions where the price reaches a certain level, or to punish buyers that backing out from auctions that reach high prices or a certain number of bids.

The other one was listed on GameGavel. It didn't reach the reserve, bidding only went up to $7,000 for it there. Not sure if it's been relisted or not.