While the world waits for the arrival of the new Tesla Roadster, three untouched examples of the original Roadster have been uncovered hiding away in shipping containers - and they've now gone up for sale. Every Roadster in this group is a 2010 model with zero miles on the clock, made up of a Sport Roadster in Radiant Red, a Sport Roadster in Very Orange, and a Base Roadster in the same Very Orange.

Gruber Motor Company, a Tesla repair center, said that the three Teslas were US-spec models purchased by a customer in China. They were then shipped to a dock in China but left in shipping containers at a port since 2010, likely racking up exorbitant storage charges over the last 13 or so years.

Gruber further explains that each Roadster comes with unopened boxes in the trunk that presumably contain the "new" charging cables and a larger external box that possibly houses the hard top and its case. As Gruber suggests, it's unknown what the state of the 53-kWh lithium-ion batteries will be after standing idle for so long, and the warranty for these batteries would have long expired. Then again, the original battery packs in older Tesla Roadsters have actually aged better than the upgraded batteries that followed a few years later.

Functional batteries or not, this is an exceedingly rare opportunity for someone with the capital to acquire what is essentially a new Tesla Roadster, even if that means spending a lot more to get it running again.

Unfortunately, it looks like some of these pictures were taken on a phone manufactured in the same year as these first-generation Tesla Roadsters. We can see enough detail to decipher that these cars haven't been used, though, with a set of flawless tan seats on one example still with their plastic coverings. Another shows the sporty steering wheel of one orange car, along with analog gauges that seem very strange in a Tesla, a company that has led the way for touchscreen-heavy interiors with vehicles like the Model 3 and Model Y.

The seller who owns these Roadsters will return the cars to the USA by the middle of this month unless a sale takes place prior to this date; the goal is to sell the cars as a set.

According to the listing, there have already been several offers for the vehicles, including $50,000 each for a total of $150,000, and up to $76,000 for the Radiant Red model on its own. The latter gets to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, 0.2 seconds quicker than the non-Sport derivative.

While the first Tesla Roadster arrived way back in 2008, Tesla has fallen behind in its bid to bring the much quicker second-gen model to market as it focuses on other projects. The new MG Cyberster, for example, has already been leaked.

Until the second-gen Roadster arrives, one individual (or perhaps even three) will be able to wait it out in a pristine first-gen model.