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Gene Roddenberry's Mac Plus Is Coming Up For Auction
Harry writes "In 1986, Apple unveiled one of the most popular Macintoshes ever, the Mac Plus. The company gave the first one (serial number #F4200NUM0001) to Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry. And now this very Mac Plus will go up for auction at a Hollywood collectibles event on October 8th and 9th, complete with a letter of authenticity from Roddenberry's son. The estimated value is only $800-$1200, which seems reasonable enough, given its double historical significance." Any bets on how high the bidding will go?
I bet it'll go for 3-4k. If they were to auction it for charity I'd bet it'd easily go over 10k
400 quatloos!!
No... 100... BILLION!
...and write Spock/Kirk slash.
At a Hollywood collectibles event, it will probably go for $200k.
If they had listed it on eBay, and slashdotted the listing, they would probably get bids in amounts over $10 million+.
But I guess after eBay fees, they're better off selling it at the Hollywood collectibles event :)
Does it come with a year of Apple Care?
...what you'd find on the main hard disc with a sector editor. THEN bid.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
If so I would dd dump the drive and bit scan it. Would be neat to pull out an old unreleased work that he scratched.
Ahh, my friend, but never forget rule of acquisition #3:
"Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to"
I'd go for 2 bars of gold-pressed latinum at most
I had a Mac Plus. It didn't have a drive. Just one floppy drive.
15m^3 of tritanium and 5cm^3 verterium cortenide
This the the Mac Plus with the formula for Transparent Aluminum on it!
Bruce Perens.
determined to be not as advertised
We've gotten several inquires about this by the fantastically loyal and knowledgeable Mac community. After further investigating the item, here's the information:
Firstly, this Macintosh was, indeed, presented to Gene Roddenberry by Apple. There is no doubt about this.
The conflict between the photo and the serial number is as follows. This computer, given by Apple to Mr. Roddenberry, is an early production Macintosh 128 (#776), which was then upgraded by Apple for Gene to a Macintosh Plus-thus the model number / serial number / panel that "belongs to" a Macintosh Plus. The 0001 led us to mistakenly believe that it was the first one off the line.
Again, the provenance of the item is perfect and it did belong to Mr. Roddenberry. I apologize for any confusion.
who stole your punctuation?
As an added bonus, you get a mouse that doubles as a microphone and understands voice input.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Considering the price of gold nowadays, that 2 bars would be about $800K. Gold Bar
I require the interface and documentation to be in Klingon.
Listen.... When you kill two birds with one stone... that's a double but not historical. When you make two holes-in-one on the same course, that might be historical, but again, not nearly a ddddddouble.
But when you boink twin-sisters on the same day, in the same bed, with the same erection....now you're talking.
10 whats?
Is that slips, strips, bars, or bricks?
Is it just me, or did anyone else read the title and immediately think they were auctioning the rights for a remake of McGiver in the 25th century?
The really problem is that every fan will bid $1701. Therefore, only a non-fan can possibly win the auction.
Is it impossible to find any original Mac that isn't yellow now?
I mean, check this Amiga 1000.(Yeah, I don't remember mine ever looking that good either. What a score.)
But Macs, I haven't see /one/ in the last ten years that hasn't succumbed to nasty yellow. Is there no hope? Anyone have one that's still white?
apple needs to restart Star Trek proposal and have mac os x for all x86 hardware back then dell the others did not want it (part of the M$ lock in that the killed beos, os/2 and others) now dell and others want it vista is a big bust and linux is ganging ground.
Wow, and here I thought F. Scott Fitzgerald was dead...
#DeleteChrome
And that's just the gold. Imagine what it would be worth with the latinum intact!
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Will it come with a collection of the floppy disks Gene Roddenberry used with it?
I can just see it, though: "Those? Our research showed they were only $.39 each new, so the value would only start at just under $400 for the thousand we threw away..."
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
I thought people only posted while drunk on Fark.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
3 bars of gold pressed latinum.
Seriously, I don't see it as much other than a museum piece. Odds are if it still works, it won't for very much longer, leaving it a glorified vase, with toxic metals in it.
Makes you wonder why they chose to encase latinum with worthless gold...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The serial number and the pictures are of an original mac, not a plus. However, see what the auction house said:
We've gotten several inquires about this by the fantastically loyal and knowledgeable Mac community. After further investigating the item, here's the information:
Firstly, this Macintosh was, indeed, presented to Gene Roddenberry by Apple. There is no doubt about this.
The conflict between the photo and the serial number is as follows. This computer, given by Apple to Mr. Roddenberry, is an early production Macintosh 128 (#776), which was then upgraded by Apple for Gene to a Macintosh Plus-thus the model number / serial number / panel that "belongs to" a Macintosh Plus. The 0001 led us to mistakenly believe that it was the first one off the line.
Again, the provenance of the item is perfect and it did belong to Mr. Roddenberry. I apologize for any confusion.
MacQuarium!
Put a little Time Travel Arch in there. Magic!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hmmm I wonder what my original, in the box it was purchased in, IBM PC 8088 w/64K of ram, two 360k floppies, IBM green screen monitor ( also in the box it came in ) with all packing materials and documentation would be worth?
And it still boots ROM Basic! ( I took it out put it on the bench and fired it up :: Motivated by a /. article :: and the machine actualy booted!
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Inert. Gold doesn't like reacting with stuff. Maybe latinum is reactive with... stuff.
#F4200NUM0001? How uninspired... I would have chosen #F4200NUM1701.
Apple may have given Roddenberry a Mac, but in a decade or so they'll be celebrating Asimov's 100th birthday with their new media-streaming, music playing domestic assistant, the iRobot.
Nobody else has this sig.
Must have been the Mac he used in school.
Get it? Only graphic designers and schools use Apple computers?
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
the first personal computer for /so/ many people, hence have value.
You've got that backwards - good supply would mean lower price.
Old Macs have a high price precisely because there were fewer of them made, compared with PCs where there were so many of them, you can't give them away.
Same thing applies to the Amiga and other non-PC computers - smaller numbers of machines were made, so the ones that survived are more likely to fetch a higher price.
If you mean you're making a distinction between home and business use - well, the Mac doesn't do so well there, as much of its sales were still in business. That explanation would work much better for the Amiga: very popular as a home machine, but overall the sales were less than the large number of PCs that were sold to businesses.
But does it run LCARS?
Graphic designers, schools, and people who were given one by Apple for free.
In Gene's ideal world, all notion of money is gone. It's a communist utopia. It's time to evolve, people. Just give it to me. See, wasn't that simple?
I wonder if this is the same Mac that was used in the famous transparent aluminum scene in Star Trek 4 that Scotty was speaking with. I'm pretty sure that was a Mac Plus as well.
Hell, I'm not even a major Trekker (Trekkie? I never know what the latest P.C. term is...) and I'd pay $5K for it. It's a hell of a conversation piece, as well as memorabilia. I'll bet there are a bunch of Trek fans who have the cash to blow who'd bid this way over that.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Lot 626, Very first Apple Macintosh Plus [serial number 0001] given to Gene Roddenberry by Apple Computer
As you can see, the auction info has not been updated to reflect the correct history of the computer.
cetroyer
Money was alive and well in Star Trek, as was trade and commerce. I think the price of the ship was even referred to at one point.
The spinoffs are another story--in them, it indeed appears that scarcity has been solved. This doesn't lead to *communist* economics, but the complete *lack* of economics. With scarcity solved, economics becomes merely a historical discipline.
hawk, sometime economics professor
I mean, Indiana Jones was dealing with 'found' antiquities. I can see the argument that such antiquities really have no "proper" owner, and ownership shouldn't just go to the first person to touch it (i.e. the person that found it), so I have no problem with the notion that such antiquities should go to a public museum for all to see. But for people's belongings, if you think after their death, they revert to the public/state, then your philosophy is very close to some sort of communism or socialism, at least.
Maybe Jones wasn't oblivious to the fact that he was basically stealing these treasures, and the "in a museum" thing was necessary for him to continue his tomb-raiding ways without being crippled by guilt?
Maybe part of his pervasive love of achaeology was in being able to present it to others?
Maybe it just served as a nice bit of dialogue for the character to convey to the audience what actually happened to the artifact at the end of the movie? :)
Bow-ties are cool.
Dude, classic! I am in tears from laughing...
> The really problem is that every fan will bid $1701. Therefore, only a non-fan can possibly win the auction.
what about $1701b, $1701c and $1701d? So the maximum bid would be up to $94237
You fail as a fan. There's an Enterprise-E, so it could go to $94238.
And I do believe the Enterprise-J showed up during an Enterprise time-travel episode. So you might need to move to another base.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Let's not talk about the Enteprise-J.
It's because latinum is liquid and so sloshes around.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Ah! A keyboard. How quaint.
This computer is really only worth money if it talks to you in the voice of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry.