A Drift Object Meant to Be in Storage Turns Up in an Etsuyo Market — Center: 'Investigating How It Got Out'
A small leather pouch — a drift object registered in 2019 as Lineage 64 and supposedly sitting in a storage rack at the Third Appraisal Center — has turned up in auction photographs from a port city in Etsuyo. The Center confirmed on the 12th that the item is in fact missing from its rack and has opened an internal inquiry into how it got out. Neither the route nor the timing is known.
It began with a listing photo from an online auction held in a port city in Etsuyo. A small leather pouch, palm-sized, was offered as "a curio of unknown provenance," and a small registration tag was visible beneath the knot in its drawstring. A Hinokuni-based drift-object collector who saw the listing noticed that the tag's format matched the Third Appraisal Center's own, and raised the matter with a dealer acquaintance connected to the Preliminary Survey Association (chaired by Kaname Tsuyuki). The dealer's inquiry to the Center, relayed through the association, led to today's disclosure.
The tag matched that of a small pouch found in Sunamachi in 2019 and registered, after full appraisal, as Lineage 64 — one of the "one-time worlds" catalogued from a single drift object. It was supposed to have remained on the fully-appraised storage racks for the six years since. When the Center checked the relevant rack on the 12th, the item itself was gone; only a copy of the tag and the paper record remained.
In its announcement on the 12th, the Center said, "A fully appraised drift object, held under state ownership, should never be able to leave a storage rack. Something that should not happen has happened," and disclosed that it has formed an internal inquiry team to trace the rack's access logs and past transfer records. The identity of the Etsuyo-side dealer behind the listing has not yet been established, and the Center is also still working to confirm whether the pouch in the photograph is genuine.
Speaking to this paper, Tsuyuki said, "Our association holds to three rules — don't open it, don't rush the client, keep the records — but if the side that's supposed to keep records breaks down, neither rule means anything," voicing concern over the effect on trust in the industry as a whole. The previously reported proposal by the coalition of ceremonial drift organizations in September, which called for a review of state-ownership custody, had questioned the Center's storage practices in general terms; this incident now backs that concern from a different angle.
The Etsuyo listing reportedly priced the pouch at roughly 40,000 yen in Hinokuni currency, offered as "a curio of unknown provenance and use." Whether it has actually sold was still unconfirmed as of the 12th. In the listing photo reviewed by this paper, the pouch's surface showed age-related cracking but otherwise appeared largely unchanged from its six years in storage. A Center official admitted, "If it really is genuine, the hardest part is that something off a fully appraised shelf ended up priced like that, sold as a 'curio.'"
The Center says only one item, Lineage 64, has been confirmed missing so far, but plans a spot inspection of other storage racks within the week. The timing, route, and anyone involved in the leak all remain unknown. This paper will continue to follow the story.
