Last year Sony celebrated the 20th anniversary of its gaming platform, PlayStation. To commemorate the event it launched a special 20th Anniversary Edition PlayStation 4. There’s nothing different in this console except for its color which is a tribute to the original PlayStation console. Only 12,300 units were produced which meant that many inevitably ended up on eBay for outrageous prices. Seeing that one was sold on eBay for $20,100 a man is now asking for $20,300 on Kickstarter to take a sledgehammer to a 20th Anniversary Edition PS4.
In the U.S. Sony sold out of the entire stock of this limited edition PS4 within a couple of hours. Same happened across the pond in the UK. Sony knows that there’s demand but won’t produce more because this is supposed to be a limited edition after all.
This means that people have to turn elsewhere. In the first few days the 20th Anniversary PlayStation 4 fetched over $20,000 but now there are ample units available on many auction websites and the going rate seems to be just north of $1,000.
Charles Tiongson has put up his “project” on Kickstarter which involves unboxing a 20th Anniversary Edition PS4, “but afterward I will use a sledge hammer to utterly destroy it,” the description reads.
What do the people who pledge money get? $1 gets them a link to the YouTube video before its released. For $5 they can have their name or PSN ID in the credits. Pledging $50 gets the link, name or PSN ID in credits and a small piece of the broken console. $100 gets all of the above with a larger piece of the broken console.
$400 brings the link, mention in the credits and broken PlayStation Eye pieces. Highest one can pledge is $500 and this brings the link, name or PSN ID mention in credits and broken pieces of the console’s DualShock 4 controller.
There are some indications that this might turn out to be a scam. For starters, Tiongson writes in the Kickstarter project that he’s not sure when this video will premier. “We will still need to purchase the equipment,” its not clear from this whether he has a 20th Anniversary PS4 unit which will be banged up or if he’s waiting for the money to come in before he goes on to purchase one.
As of this writing four backers have pledged a total of $121 against his goal of $20,300. There are still 59 days to go as pledges will be accepted until 2nd March, 2015.
Filed in . Read more about Crowdfunding, Kickstarter and PlayStation 4.