Rare functional Apple-1 computer sold at auction for $458,711

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A rare functioning Apple-1 computer sold for $458,711.25, including buyer's premium, on Thursday at Boston-based auction house RR Auction.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is thought to have built about 200 Apple-1 computers, making them a rare collector's item.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is thought to have built about 200 Apple-1 computers, making them a rare collector's item.


The machine was appraised earlier in 2020 on an episode of "Pawn Stars" and was found to be an "amazing example" worth at least $500,000. While RR Auction attempted to sell the machine to World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop owner Rick Harrison, he passed on the offer.

According to RR Auction, this specific Apple-1 was acquired by Michigan computer store SoftWarehouse in the 1980s as part of a trade for IBM machines. It was displayed in a museum case before being placed into storage.

The lot included the original board with a Synertek CPU, Apple Cassette Interface, display case, keyboard kit, power supply, monitor and manuals. The starting bid was set at $50,000.

Apple co-founder and engineer Steve Wozniak is believed to have hand-built about 200 Apple-1 computers. Steve Jobs and company later sold about 175 of those, including 50 in an order to The Byte Shop in California.

This isn't the first time that an Apple-1 has fetched a similar price at auction. In May 2019, another Apple-1 was sold for around $471,000 at Christie's auction house in London.

Later that year, an original Apple-1 manual sold for $12,956 at RR Auction. About 65 of the original manuals are thought to exist, making them a bit rarer than the machines they were packaged with.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 1
    iOS_Guy80iOS_Guy80 Posts: 884member
    Wish my fully functional Apple IIe, green monitor, duo disk drive, Epson 1000 dot matrix printer, VisiCalc leather bound manual with floppy discs, PFS software bundle from SPC, all operating 5 1/4” disks and original packaging were worth as much.
    watto_cobra
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