Its maybe not a single individuals fault.
They have writers. They have accounting/business relationships, inventory, procurement, social media, and even a single individual (or is team already?) that organizes events such as LTX.
It may be one half of the staff knows the value of that block, but someone else just YOLO'ed it.
They did have a sign up describing what it is. So it is still a bit beyond me.
From what I understand, review items can be shipped in OEM or retail packaging. Someones manufacturers ask for it back, but a bigger channel can ask to hold onto it as they may need it for future videos.
If they may keep it and have retail packaging, it should have full retail value. In OEM packaging it obviously be a bit different. But that is to say they were confident it was a keeper. Seeing as it was a one of a kind prototype, it seems unlikely.
I've scrolled through LTTs reddit today. Apparently all auction winners
were emailed to reply what they had won, because they lost their winners sheet and they it need for "tax reports".
BilletLabs then posted later that Linus had found the auction winner, and they should be able to get the block back. Billet refused, because they were already building a new one, and basically lost confidence in LTT and a private individual(which can't really be faulted) for getting it back in a timely manner and good shape.
And someone made a live FloatPlane sub tracker. Apparently it was up as high as 42k before all this:
https://grafana.elizabeth.codes/public-dashboards/10023c4c479744e191760225708c0124?orgId=1&from=now-24h&to=now 