November 23, 2010: An early Apple-1 pc, full with its authentic packaging and a letter signed by Steve Jobs, sells for $210,000.
On the time, it ranks as the costliest private pc ever bought at public sale. That is smart, as a result of it’s an extremely uncommon discover. The working Apple-1 is considered considered one of solely roughly 50 nonetheless in existence.
Italian collector buys authentic Apple pc
Italian businessman and personal collector Marco Boglione purchased the Apple-1 in query. The sportswear firm proprietor possessed an intensive archive of private computer systems, together with different uncommon Apple fashions.
“I’m a man that has been coping with these machines, let me say loving these machines, and actually being hooked up to those machines, since I used to be a child,” Boglione instructed The Seattle Occasions in an interview shortly after the public sale.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, readily available for the Apple-1 public sale, vouched for the machine’s good working order. Boglione introduced that the Apple-1 would go on show in Italy’s Museum of the Data Expertise Revolution, in his hometown.
Apple-1 public sale: A worth price paying
2010 marked the top of Steve Jobs’ progressive string of {hardware} hits. That 12 months, the iPad joined the iMac, iBook, iPod and iPhone — merchandise that outlined Jobs’ legendary second stint working Apple. (Jobs died in 2011.)
On the time, observers couldn’t cease speaking concerning the amount of cash Boglione paid for the Apple-1. The $210,000 buy worth dwarfed the pc’s authentic $666.66 price ticket when it was manufactured in July 1976. (It was additionally round 10 occasions greater than you may need paid for an Apple-1 throughout Cupertino’s unhealthy outdated days within the Nineteen Nineties.)
Nevertheless, it now seems to be like one thing of a discount. Simply 4 years later, in 2014, one other Apple-1 pc bought at public sale for an unbelievable $905,000, between two and 3 times the anticipated asking worth of $300,000 to $500,000. Whereas that is still essentially the most ever spent on an Apple-1 — a pc with simply 8KB of RAM and a reasonable, 8-bit 6502 microprocessor — it definitely means that Boglione bought an excellent deal.
Apple solely constructed round 200 Apple-1 items in complete. And the quantity nonetheless in existence at the moment is considerably smaller than that, resulting from each age and the truth that Apple supplied a trade-in deal for the considerably upgraded Apple II when it launched in 1977.