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Mystery Woman Recycles $200,000 Apple I Computer
Dave Knott writes: A recycling centre in the Silicon Valley is looking for a woman who dropped off an old computer for recycling. The computer was apparently inside boxes of electronics that she had cleaned out from her garage after her husband died. This would be nothing unusual, except that the recycled computer was an Apple I. The recycling firm eventually sold the Apple I for $200,000 to a private collection, and because the company gives 50 per cent of the proceeds from sold items back to the original owner, they wish to split the proceeds with the mystery donor.
The guy who reportedly "knows what she looks like", will strike a deal with another woman that he trusts.
And I'm Brian!
It, and everything else, are worth exactly what people are willing to pay for them.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Sadly this kinds of thing happens every day. I'm surprised that a "recycler" even caught it before sending it off to a third world landfill. I dare say any manuals and software the owner had went directly in to the regular trash.
You can't keep it all, but for anything roughly 1980s or earlier vintage, it might be worth at least having a local computer geek taking a look at it before sending off for "recycling". Slashdotters probably already know this, but it would be good if people could get the word out. Big corps have the masses too well trained that anything more than a year or to old must be disposed of.
There are actually whole communities around vintage gear. If anyone has questions trying to identify old hardware or software, feel free to drop in at http://www.vintage-computer.co... and ask!
It's called "historicity". An item that is an actualization of a historic event. Apple I represents the start of a major cultural, if not technological, shift.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Anything involving Apple is a bit nuts.
But among other things, an Apple I represents one of the early beginnings in the computing world. You can't get much closer to the direct early work of Woz and Jobs. Apple Is are indeed very rare. Supposedly most Apple Is were traded in for discounts on Apple IIs, so few were left in the general public. The parts themselves are rare. Woz chose some parts that weren't even incredibly common at the time - so it is difficult to build accurate replicas. (An Apple II replica, in contrast can be built from mostly from parts that are still available new)
There is actually quite a bit of demand for vintage items that similarly represent various "beginnings". Such as TRS-80s, Commodore PETs, Apple II/II+s, IBM 5150 PCs, etc, but those are common enough they can often be had for a few hundred dollars.
The computer store on El Camino Real in Los Altos used to have an Apple 1 in the display case showing a price tag of one million dollars. This was about 1988. I believed it.
Not really, all you had to do was walk into the Byte Shop.
According to Woz, that's a myth. Apple did no manufacturing in the garage.
If the tone of your post is any indication of what you are like in person, I believe that you may be entirely wrong, almost to the point of being polar opposite to reality, about their intentions about why they distance themselves... .
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It, and everything else, are worth exactly what people are willing to pay for them.
Of course, but I wasn't questioning that it was worth that amount of money. I asked why.
Interesting question... the collector's market is really strange and much of it is completely illogical. Things nobody wants can be worth a fortune a little later. Believe it or not there are actually fashion trends in junk. I'm constantly amazed at the crap you can sell interior decorators. When steam punk is all the rage you can sell old cogwheels and cast iron table legs for a fortune, when the trend switches to 70's nostalgia your rusty iron machinery becomes worthless but crappy plastic disco balls and sweaty old clothes become valuable rarities. Believe it or not vintage jeans can be worth thousands and the more beat up they are the more people pay. I've seen people buy stuff that I resolutely refused to believe was worth a dime before I saw money change hands. Just because it's rare or old does not mean it is valuable, but it could be if it comes into fashion so timing is key. Stuff like the Apple I is valuable because of the history of Apple and the company's effect on the computer business. Most Nazi stuff is considered creepy and sells to a niche market but Enigma machines are an exception and sell to rich math geeks and IT startups millionaires because you get nerd points for owning one. Just wait a couple of decades and watch Google promotional banners, posters, coffee mugs, t-shirts or low serial Nexus One smartphones sell for outlandish sums of money.
I think I may have found her.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
...who left the Apple I computer please form a line at the door.
No, there was a display ad in Kilobaud Computing and some other magazines. You could mail order an Apple Board for $666. I used to have a complete run of Kilobaud and that ad was in issue #1.
And they say we need more women in STEM!!!!
We do. We need more people in STEM generally, even if it results in too many people in STEM, because it's a lot better to have people trained to think rationally than not.
I've watched enough episodes of all kinds of shows like 'Pickers' and 'Salvage Hunters' in addition to my own experience to know that you'd not believe what stuff you have laying around in your garage or on your property that's worth money and it doesn't have to be a long lost Vermeer, the hitherto unknown seventh production Bugatti Royale or a Ming vase.
And I've actually owned an auction company in years gone by and I can assure you that almost all of the stuff people have lying around their garage is genuinely garbage or at best not worth much. Certainly not worth the hassle of trying to sell it on eBay in most cases. People tend to think old = valuable but in most cases that simply isn't true. Yes, sometimes you run across a genuine treasure but that is a seriously rare occurrence.
Shows like American Pickers are ludicrously unrealistic except in the sense that a lot of people who deal in secondhand goods (read junk) are seriously weird people. I've had to deal with a lot of them first hand. Some of the strangest people I've ever met. Some nice, some not so much, but rarely what you or I would consider "normal".
My sister even cleaned out her house last year, put the junk into one big box and flogged most of it on ebay for just under £200. The biggest problem you have when cleaning out a house or a property is not making money off of what might seem like junk at first glance, it's finding a dealer who isn't going to rip you off if you don't have time to sell your junk yourself.
A decent part of my auction business was estate sales. If you don't want to go to the trouble of doing it yourself (which is VERY reasonable - it's a huge pain) then just accept the fact that you'll get something out of it but probably not the maximum possible. Get a separate person to appraise what is in the estate if you are concerned about being ripped off. Bear in mind that this will cost money. You hire someone to liquidate estate assets because you want to have a life and doing this is HUGELY time consuming. It's ok if the estate sale person/company makes a decent or even handsome profit. You'll avoid a huge time sink and you'll get some money you wouldn't have had otherwise. If you want certain items from the estate just set them aside ahead of time.
There are already at least 4 in museums (Smithsonian, Sydney Powerhouse, London Science, Henry Ford Michigan). From the POV of museums they make a nice item. The name is recognisable (first apple computer is going to get more attention than say a OSI Model 500), its a convenient size (which is why a lot of british museums have a ZX Spectrum on display while the APE(X)C is in storage) and history of computing galleries are pretty much a must for any science/technology museum at the moment