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Rare Operating Apple 1 Rakes In $374,500 At Sotheby's Auction
coondoggie writes "It's not one-of-a-kind, but it's pretty darn close. Sotheby's this week auctioned off a rare, working Apple 1 computer for $374,500 to an unnamed bidder. The price was more than double the expected price listed on the Sotheby's web site. Sotheby's notes about the Apple 1 say it is one of six thought-to-be-operational boxes and one of about 50 known to exist."
Very scarce and unique item, that thing should be pretty hard to copy as all the chips on the board are impossible to manufacture nowdays. Who does MOS at that big scale today ? Or the other rare electronic components inside..
Such an artifact might be worth millions in a few decades, should be a good anti-inflation bet.
$666.66 in 1976 had the same buying power as $2,710.75 in 2012.
Now, as then, that'll buy you Apple's latest and greatest computer.
(Actually it's $2,799.00 but still remarkably close given this span of 36 years!)
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Well, technically they probably wouldn't know what it was immediately simply because the Apple I shipped as basically a motherboard. People had to buy their own case, power supply, etc -- no different than the custom-built PCs of today. So unless the 'Genius' opened the case, they wouldn't necessarily even know it was an Apple product.
It's interesting to note that even back then, Apple's philosophy was sell the hardware, give away the software [big jpg ahead].
From the Apple I ad: "And since our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost, you won't be continually paying for access to this growing software library."
The Apple IPO was in 1980 for $22/share. $666.66 would have purchased a little over 30 shares. Since then, it has paid a few dollars in dividends (which can be ignored) and split 2:1 three times. You would now own 240 shares, and it closed today at $574 for a value of $137,000.