It was released March 1997 with a retail price of US$7,499, and only available in USA, UK, few Euro countries, and Japan.
Only 12,000 were manufactured, 399 held for spare parts, so 11,701 released. 20 came to Apple AU, with a few given away in competitions, 1 was on display at Apple HQ in Sydney for a while, and best as I know, the rest were used by Apple AU execs.
Failing sales saw the price cut to about US$3500 half way through its release cycle (with high-end PowerBooks being offered for free to early adopters who complained about paying full price) before the TAM was discontinued March 1998.
Reportedly Steve Jobs hated the TAM (representing everything wrong with Apple), and one of his first commands as iCEO was to have them firesaled to US$1,999 at the time of discontinuation.
The remaining TAMs sold out (in the USA at least; from memory firesale prices didn’t apply worldwide) within 2 weeks of the firesale. To get mine, I first had to find a US reseller who would sell to me - Apple resellers aren’t meant to sell CPUs outside their country - and find one who had a TAM in stock. The first one who offered to sell me a TAM said they had one “coming soon”, so I kept looking and secured one through a Beverley Hills store. The “Coming Soon” story was repeated around the US as people heard of the sale and attempted to secure a TAM, only to find out they were all sold out…
There’s a few of us here on… AppleTalk… who own TAMs. I’d love to find out though what happened to the original 20…