Hundreds of missing Playdate handheld consoles mysteriously reappeared outside a “random restaurant” in Las Vegas on Thursday after being missing for months, according to a post from Playdate’s manufacturer Panic.”Welcome back stolen Playdates!” the company said on X, adding: “For now, this was our best possible outcome, the result of lots of time and detective work.” Four pallets of Playdates went missing when FedEx delivered them to the wrong address, dumping the boxes at a construction site back in March, according to Panic. After the boxes were incorrectly delivered, they were swiped. Two missing pallets were recovered earlier this year. Judging by Playdate’s images, at least 40 boxes were found this week, but it’s unclear how many still contain the correct number of Playdates inside.Panic said some of the Playdates were stolen and resold, or “fenced.” It also hinted that the illicit resales were “crucial” to helping the company get the devices back. When the $400,000 worth of Playdates initially disappeared, Panic Co-founder Cabel Sasser said the company is able to determine exactly which serial numbers are missing, so it may have used the Playdates’ serial numbers to figure out how many and which swiped devices were being resold online.
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“We checked up on our inventory levels and it was a little bit short, and we contacted the shipping center and they’re like, ‘Yeah, weird. FedEx said they were delivered but we have no trace of them,'” Sasser shared back in March after the boxes vanished.
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FedEx hasn’t exactly taken responsibility or apologized for the mishap, either. “The FedEx executive office did reach out,” Panic said, claiming that the shipping giant only made the effort because stories about the misdelivery were circulating online. PCMag has reached out to Panic and FedEx for comment.
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