Indeed a massive shame. The case was ultimately thrown out but by then Valve had stopped production. I still boycott Corsair today over this.

I have the OG steam controller. I didn't realize it had turned into a collector's item.

Really? I'd assumed it was just a commercial failure because Valve tried to replace an analog stick with a trackpad that performs worse in almost every way.

Pretty much everyone I know bought one, tried it for a while, and determined that the trackpad simply did not work well enough. It's a really cool device and I've been trying for years to actually use it. It's great hardware, but the ergonomics and UX is really just not good.