Gamer Finds Neat Piece of PlayStation History at a Garage Sale

25.02.2024 - 16:43 / gamerant.com / Josh Tolentino / Sony

A small but meaningful piece of PlayStation brand history seems to have popped up in hard hat form at a garage sale. The unusual, possibly rare apparel item's appearance hints at a Sony and PlayStation presence at a once-iconic location in San Francisco, California.

With a history stretching back into the mid-1990s and as present in the United States and Europe as in Japan, it's not unusual to find PlayStation-branded items in flea markets, garage sales, and online auction listings. These pieces of old merchandise and «swag» rarely carry much monetary value, but can still be rare, as some items were exclusively given to Sony and PlayStation employees to commemorate special occasions, like the PlayStation 5 launch.

The latest item to show up in a gamer's garage sale haul is a PlayStation-branded worker's hard hat. The hard hat was purchased by Reddit user Meander86, who shared photos of the find on the PlayStation subreddit on February 20. The PlayStation-branded hard hat is a standard black plastic hard hat, used by workers everywhere to protect their heads at job sites. What sets it apart is a classic PlayStation logo printed directly onto the hard hat's shell. The logo on the hat matches the original 1994 PlayStation logo, rendered using the same coloration and themes as in the PS1 and PS2 eras. Inside the hard hat was a note that identified it as the former property of an engineer that worked on electronics for the Metreon PlayStation Store in San Francisco, California.

The Metreon is a shopping center located in San Francisco, and was originally owned and operated by Sony as an «urban entertainment center.» It had an arcade, a movie theater, and Sony-focused retail stores, including a PlayStation store. The PlayStation store at the Metreon played host to some key events in the brand's history, including the launch events for the PlayStation 3 and PSP. The Metreon proved unprofitable, though, and Sony sold it in 2006, eventually closing the Sony and PlayStation stores in 2009.

Commenters in the thread mentioned that the note seems to date the hard hat to a point as far back as the early 2000s or even 1999, when the Metreon first opened under Sony's management. With the PlayStation store there long gone, the hat's association with that specific time and location makes it historically meaningful, if in a minor way. Other commenters took notice of the iconic PlayStation logo colors, lamenting the loss of «personality» in the Sony branding. In the 2010s and later in the PS3's lifespan, Sony quietly switched to rendering the «PS» in the PlayStation logo in monochrome. The colors stayed around in the form of flourishes like the PS badge on the original PlayStation 3's housing, but for the most part the