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Rare Operating Apple 1 Rakes In $374,500 At Sotheby's Auction

Posted by Soulskill on from the new-iphone-price-confirmed dept.

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."

6 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like a pretty run of the mill Apple mark up...

    1. Re:Well... by PatPending · · Score: 4, Interesting

      $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)
  2. Beowolf cluster by BennyB2k4 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Imagine a.. wait, I can't. there's only 6 of them.

  3. Re:Bah by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's even user upgradable.

    Ewwwwwwww

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  4. Re:36 y.o. electrolytic capacitors! by Nimey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course they did. It's just that the crap stuff isn't here anymore, so the survivors were the better ones.

    Same deal with houses, when some idiot says that they make worse houses now, they're forgetting about all the crap houses from back then that don't exist anymore.

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  5. Re:What happens... by petsounds · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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."