The Steam Deck isn’t exactly the cheapest gaming handheld out there, but if you thought $549 was a high price point for the OLED model, then prepare to have your mind blown. According to an eBay listing, someone has just spent $2,000 on a Steam Deck prototype, five times the price of the current cheapest version. Still, owning a piece of gaming history rarely comes without a cost.
For those who don’t know, the Steam Deck, a top pick from our guide to the best handheld consoles, went through multiple iterations before finally launching in February 2022. Looking at the images from the eBay listing, it looks like this could be a pretty early version of the Valve console, with massive circular trackpads, smaller analog sticks, and a couple of colorful buttons. Honestly, I’m pretty glad this wasn’t the final version, as I barely use the trackpads, but opinions are split on the Steam Deck Reddit page.
Interestingly, this specific prototype seems to be the same one that Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais showed off on social media back in 2022, just a few months after the official launch. According to Griffais, this version taught Valve “a ton about comfort,” and it utilized an AMD Picasso APU, offering “about half of the GPU power of the final Deck.” With that in mind, the new owner might struggle to play all the best Steam Deck games on the handheld, but we’re assuming they’ve bought it more as a collector’s item than a daily gaming driver. At least, we hope that’s the case.
If you want an idea of how this prototype compares to the rest of the Steam Deck demo units, a social media post from Mr. Game Industry himself, Geoff Keighley, also from 2022, has an image with all of the scrapped models. The prototypes range from orange-and-blue monstrosities to form factors that look more similar to some of the picks from our guide to the best mobile controllers than the final version. As far as all the demo units go, the recently sold option is one of the closest to the Steam Deck as we know it now, except for those chunky trackpads.
With all this in mind, I’ll be keeping an eye out for future Steam Deck prototype sales to see whether this model turns out to be a great deal or an expensive gamble. If you want to avoid breaking the bank on your next tech purchase, take a look at our guides to the best gaming phones and the best gaming tablets while you’re here, with a bunch of great deals on some of our favorite devices.