Tried to reset to factory but now get This item is temporarily Unavailable

"This Item is temporarily unavailable...""

... as long as you try to get it with the Apple-ID you are using.

To restore the MacOS your Mac "shipped in the box", restart Recovery using the correct key sequence shown in this article:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

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Did you do a complete wipe of the drive? That might have killed the recovery partition.

You won't be able to access Internet Recovery from a machine of that vintage since they didn't have firmware updates until the mid-2010 models.

Computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery - Apple Support

Not sure a Snow Leopard install disc would work, but those are cheap. They won't install on a machine where the factory OS was Snow Leopard. Your machine might have come with factory recovery discs. There are used ones for sale. Lion won't work.

The other alternative is to use a bootable installer on a USB flash drive or an external drive. However, you'll need access to a working Mac to set it up. And the latest operating system that is supported for your machine is El Capitan.

How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

I'd suggest getting an appointment at an Apple Store and asking if they might be able to help you set up a bootable installer. You would need to bring in a large enough USB-A flash drive. 16 GB is enough, and I've bought one for less than $10. Apple Stores still have desktop computers with USB-A ports.

The tough part would be getting the installer since the easy way to get it would be to do it from a Machine that has High Sierra or earlier. You can't do it from a machine that has Mojave. However, I'm thinking at an Apple Store they've seen this enough that they can figure out where to get it or might even have the installers saved somewhere.

Good luck. I know this is a pain.

so sorry, I saw 2009 but read 2019.

y_p_w has the solutions, except there is one more.

There is a Snow Leopard DVD available from the Apple Online store for US$20, delivered by Mail or UPS or such. It has a snow leopard installer and all the required utilities on it:

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple

Once it is fully update with:

 menu > Software Update

... the Mac App Store appears and choices up through El Capitan become available. El Capitan is the waypoint that must be installed to get the newer App Store that allows installs beyond El Captain.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

so sorry, I saw 2009 but read 2019.

y_p_w has the solutions, except there is one more.

There is a Snow Leopard DVD available from the Apple Online store for US$20, delivered by Mail or UPS or such. It has a snow leopard installer and all the required utilities on it:

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple

Once it is fully update with:

 menu > Software Update

... the Mac App Store appears and choices up through El Capitan become available. El Capitan is the waypoint that must be installed to get the newer App Store that allows installs beyond El Captain.

Thought of that, but wasn't the mid-2010 model kind of in between Leopard and Snow Leopard? I have played around with my copy I bought in 2010, and even though they don't say anything about using it as a clean install I've fired it up and it's got a clean install as an option.

Lion obviously isn't an option since there's no install disc.

What would be ideal would be tracking down the exact model of install discs that shipped with the machine. I looked online and there are at least two different versions for a 15" mid-2010.

You could track down the factory software, but that's harder than just buying the 10.6 DVD, and the 10.6 DVD is not tied to an Apple-ID so it is very similar to a factory install.

So I guess it depends on what you want to accomplish -- a factory-like install or the EXACT factory software?

I thought the issue was that the 10.6 disc will check to see if the machine is on a list of approved installation machines that were released before the software was made available. If that machine came out after the 10.6 disc, won't it refuse to install? I'm wondering what happens if Snow Leopard was the default OS on the OP's MBP.

Also - aren't there two different versions of the retail Snow Leopard disc? I bought mine the first week it was available and I'm pretty sure it's 10.6.0. There's another one available that seems to be 10.6.3.

The original MacOS seem to be 10.5.7 for the MacBook Pro 15-in from 2009, and supports up through 10.11 El Capitan:

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-2-duo-2.53-aluminum-15-mid-2009-sd-unibody-specs.html

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Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

The original MacOS seem to be 10.5.7 for the MacBook Pro 15-in from 2009, and supports up through 10.11 El Capitan:

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-2-duo-2.53-aluminum-15-mid-2009-sd-unibody-specs.html

Understood. But doesn't it get kind of odd when there's a new OS introduced during the production run and that becomes the factory install OS?

Some wierdness comes when a custom version of a new Major version is released, because the Build number of the 'shipped in the box' version is higher than the build number of xxx.0 version available for anyone to download. For a month or so, it is really awkward to re-install the 'factory' software.

When you re-install 'factory' I think it gives you the LAST minor version of the major version it shipped with.

The more obscure case where the later ones ship with the next major version, I can't answer for certain.