A fully operational Apple-1 computer that was hand-numbered by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs sold for $442,118 at auction this month. The piece of history had been expected to go for around $375,000.
There were just 200 Apple-1 computers produced by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, and it is believed that only 60 to 70 remain. The Apple-1 that was auctioned was listed as #78. It is hand numbered by Steve Jobs.
The Apple-1 that was sold was in working condition, restored to a working state in 2018 by Apple expert Corey Cohen.
The auction included a letter of authenticity that confirmed Jobs’ handwriting on the board and included the original Apple-1, original Apple Cassette Interface, original operation manual, a surplus ASCII keyboard from the same time period, and an open-frame Sanyo 4205 monitor.
The Apple-1 was originally conceived by Steve Jobs and Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak as a bare circuit board to be sold as a kit and completed by electronics hobbyists, their initial market being Palo Alto’s Homebrew Computer Club. Seeking a larger audience, Jobs approached Paul Terrell, owner of The Byte Shop in Mountain View, California, one of the first personal computer stores in the world.
Aiming to elevate the computer beyond the hobbyist realm, Terrell agreed to purchase 50 Apple-1 computers, but only if they were fully assembled. The Apple-1 thus became one of the first ‘personal’ computers which did not require soldering by the end user. Altogether, over a span of about ten months, Jobs and Wozniak produced about 200 Apple-1 computers and sold 175 of them.
Alongside the hand-numbered Apple-1, auction site RR Auction also sold a Steve Jobs-signed NeXT brochure for $18,210, an early production 1988 NeXT computer for $6,094, and a Tim Cook-signed Auburn University football for $5,681.
The Science and Technology auction from RR Auction began on November 18 and concluded on December 15.
