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94 Londoners Just Got 20th Anniversary PS4s for £19.94

Or you could spend thousands on one on eBay.
Image: Robert McCallum

A PlayStation pop-up store on Bethnal Green Road opened this morning to sell the 20-year anniversary special-edition of the PS4 console—for just £19.94 ($31). On eBay, several of the consoles are getting ​bids over £1,000. 

A horde of almost five hundred people lined the street in East London, all vying to get a piece of gaming nostalgia as, you guessed it, 94 of the limited edition consoles went on sale at that low price. Store staff wore a strict 90s shell suit uniform, as the store was decked out in a plethora of vintage PlayStation games as well as other memorabilia from the era.

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Image: Robert McCallum

PlayStation UK sent a ​cryptic tweet last night showing the exterior of the store with the words: "Huh, what's that?" An hour later a video showing the console in the store was tweeted from the same account, but gaming fanatics had already figured out the news and location of the store.

The 94 customers had to knock on a hatch at the rear of the shop, and present a piece of original PlayStation merchandise and the password "I crashed my bandicoot," a reference to the classic game Crash Bandicoot.

Image: Robert McCallum

It's been two decades since the little grey box brought joy to so many gamers' lives with games like Ridge Racer, Tekken, and Wipeout. Modelled on the classic colour of the original PlayStation, the limited edition PS4 console was ​announced last Wednesday to celebrate the milestone of PlayStation's launch in 1994.

David Stockley, a 26-year-old software developer from Woolwich, was the first person to arrive at the store, located at 133 Bethnal Green Road, at 6.30pm last night—around ten minutes after the tweet went out. He set up notifications from his social media feeds last week when news of the limited edition PS4 broke; when the tweet went out he immediately booked the day off work and set off for the store.

Image: Robert McCallum

Having spent the night outside in near freezing temperatures, Stockley said: "I grew up with PlayStation. I got the first one when I was eight years old and I've got the entire range, I just had to add the twentieth anniversary console. Considering their limited numbers, to be first in the line to get one in the UK is pretty awesome. It's been a fun night!"

He collected the first limited edition grey PS4 shortly after the store opened at 11am.

Image: Robert McCallum

By 10pm last night, the queue had already reached capacity for the 94 limited edition consoles available. Fergal Gara, head of PlayStation UK, was at the event to sell the first console. "The store is like a shrine, it's a museum of PlayStation," he said. "We're trying to do something for the fans. Their dedication never fails to impress us and is what keeps PlayStation going."

The PlayStation 94 store is open for a week and will be selling 94 more of the limited edition PS4 consoles on both Thursday and Friday morning, for the full retail price of £399, before the remainder of the UK's allocation goes on sale online next week.