A rare fully functional Apple-1 computer has sold for $458,711 at auction this week, according to Boston-based RR Auction.
RR Auction says the computer was acquired by Michigan computer store SoftWarehouse in the 1980s as part of a trade for a newer IBM machine. It was subsequently displayed in the store in a custom-made museum style case, before being placed into storage. The computer was restored to its original, operational state in June 2019 by "Apple-1 expert" Corey Cohen, who evaluated the current condition of the unit as 8/10.
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"The Apple-1 is not only a marvel of early computing ingenuity but the product that launched what is today one of the most valuable and successful companies in the world," said Bobby Livingston, Executive VP at RR Auction, adding that early Apple products continue to attract interest from passionate fans of the company worldwide.
The computer was sold with all components and accessories required for operation and proved to be fully functional for around eight hours in a comprehensive test.
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It is believed that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak built 200 of the Apple-1 computers and sold 175 of them, making it a rare collector's item. The computer was originally conceived as a bare circuit board to be sold as a kit and completed by electronics hobbyists, but Steve Jobs later sold 50 fully assembled units of the computer to The Byte Shop in California.
Another fully functional Apple-1 computer sold for $905,000 back in 2014.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Ahh the memories, I think i threw out two apple I logic boards that I could not get to work and sold them a Apple IIe replacement.
I am still a IT person working in my home town where I fixed all those computers over the years. Just today I put in more memory in a Apple iMac system. Wow were did those 40 some years go :)
Here i am in 1982 just about the time Software house opened for business.
I have a collection of older Macs, but I doubt I will ever have one of these.
I wonder if one day, maybe 40 years from now, there will be auctions for MBPs with fully-functional butterfly keyboard.RR Auction says the computer was acquired by Michigan computer store SoftWarehouse in the 1980s as part of a trade for a newer IBM machine. It was subsequently displayed in the store in a custom-made museum style case, before being placed into storage. The computer was restored to its original, operational state in June 2019 by "Apple-1 expert" Corey Cohen, who evaluated the current condition of the unit as 8/10.
I see you still have the computer you wrote this comment with. Why don't you sell it to buy some Coronavirus test kits.Very nice find, but that would buy a lot of Coronavirus test kits.
It'll make you wish for dongles - hooking up anything external involves soldering and other hardware hackery and writing your own driver software. The follow-on Apple ][ at least had slots (beyond the cassette I/O and NTSC video out) - but you needed a circuit board (read 3" by 6" dongle covered in exposed electronic parts) to connect to anything.No expansion slots, soldered on RAM. Hold on though... no dongles.
Suddenly interested in knowing more about how this operated...
Yes! Well, it plays the precursor to Doom called Asterisk Demons(1) can it play Doom?
>*<
_^_
Above you can see the player has the BFG, and is ready to shoot a cacodemon - exciting!