24 October 2014

Apple 1 gets world-record price


ZDNet has an article by Colin Barker about a lot of money for a very ancient computer:
One of the first Apple 1 computers has gone under the hammer at auctioneer Bonhams for a shade under a million dollars.
That's a lot of money for a few bits of wood, plastic and metal, but it is fair to say that while that's is a lot of money, the Apple 1's place in the pantheon of computer history— alongside that of its designer, Steve Wozniak (photo on the monitor)— should be somewhere very close to the front.
It is no surprise that an Apple 1 should sell at that price. Steve Jobs managed to get the first order for a hundred Apple 1s to be sold at $500 each. He eventually sold two hundred of them.
These days, Apple 1s regularly come up for sale at auction and, over the years, they have steadily increased in value. It is only a matter of time before one sells for a million.
According to the auctioneers, the Apple 1 was expected to sell for nearly half a million dollars before the Henry Ford Museum of Dearborn, Michigan, stepped in to buy it.
Commenting on the sale, Cassandra Hatton, the senior specialist in charge of the auction for Bonhams, said that the provenance on the Apple 1 was excellent and the condition outstanding. She said that it was not surprising that it did so well. "We are thrilled to have broken the world record for its sale, and are even more thrilled that it is going to a wonderful new home at the Henry Ford Museum," Hatton said.
In addition to the intact motherboard, this Apple 1 has a vintage keyboard with pre-7400 series military specification chips, a vintage Sanyo monitor, a custom power supply in a wooden box, and two vintage tape decks.
The lot also includes ephemera from the Cincinnati AppleSiders, such as their first newsletter, Poke-Apple, from February of 1979 and a video recording of Steve Wozniak's keynote speech at the 1980 Applevention. The example that was sold is one of fifty hand-built for the ByteShop by Woz in the summer of 1976.
Rico says he wishes now he'd kept one (with a case) from his early days at Apple...

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