One of the first Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) computers ever made will go on auction on the Christie’s auction block in New York next week. The price estimated is a whopping half million dollars (£322,000), perhaps even more than that.
The Apple 1, which was made way back in 1976, is a predecessor of the MacBook, iPads and iPhones. The auction of Apple 1 will be held online from June 24 to July 9.
Last month there was an Apple 1 sold by a German auction house for $671,400 (£432,472).
200 Apple 1’s Were Made
Around 200 Apple 1’s were designed. According to certain estimates, at present, around 30 to 50 systems exist. The Apple 1 computer had eight kilobytes of memory, which is a million times less than the memory that an average computer has today.
There has been a growing trend in acquiring classic Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) products after the death of Steve Jobs in October 2011. The popularity of these vintage machines depicts the charisma that Jobs had when he and Steve Wozniak started building computer prototypes in a California garage.
Stephen A. Edwards, professor of computer science at Columbia University, called the Apple 1 “a seed out of which entire orchid grew”. He said that it has been shocking that the sale price was in six digits, and the market has gone crazy.
Who Owns This Vintage Apple?
This Apple 1 is owned by retired school psychologist Ted Perry in California, and is kept in a cardboard box. According to Perry, the green plastic surface over which the memory chips are mounted is the moment from where the computer revolution started.
Two college dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak made this board and sold it at the price of $666.66 (now £430).
“This is a piece of history that made a difference in the world, it’s where the computer revolution started,” said Ted Perry.
Perry got this computer as a second hand item in a barter trade with the previous owner. Perry observed that, with the help of Apple 1, a deaf boy was responding and learning in a better way.
Perry learned computer programming after he got the Apple. He later went to Wozniak, who personally helped him create interactive lessons for students by providing him “Internal Code” as Perry calls it.
The Christie auction house sent an expert to Perry’s home to test the Apple 1, to see if it works or not. The motherboard of the computer is original. All other accessories like keyboard, monitor and a storage device, which is a portable cassette tape deck, were attached afterwards.
