Take this one with a grain of salt as these early Best Buy inventory screens are often wrong, at least when it comes to pricing.  But ...

BGR is reporting on some intel they just received regarding a Palm Pre "trial launch" at Best Buy.  The big box retailer will supposedly be getting 4,500 Pres to sell starting June 7th at $199 with a two-year contract for new Sprint customers.  Existing customers will be able to upgrade to Pre for $299, and for a cool grand you'll be able to walk out of BB with a contract-free Pre.  Yup, $999.99 is your (alleged) price for having first WebOS device on the block with no committment weighing you down.

Bear in mind there are a lot of Best Buys across the land, and 4,500 ain't as many phones as you might think.  Each BB outlet will have at least one Pre on hand, which sounds both sketchy and in line with recent omnious reports that Palm is going to release Pre all trickle-stream-like in order to inflate consumer demand.  Blech.  No info on a Sprint launch date, and one more time people, this is just a rumor right now.  Don't go standing in line at Best Buy a month ahead of time just because you read something on the InterWebs, okay?