The original Apple I motherboard for sale at Christie's auction house failed to sell. The auction company expected the board to sell for $127,000, but the bidding failed to reach the reserve price, resulting in no sale. The top bid was reported to be $51,155, well short of the $80,000 reserve.
A nonworking Apple I board have been listed for auction on October 9 at Christie's of London. The unit, with serial number 22, came from former Apple employee Joe Copson. The unit originally came with just 8K of RAM and no case, keyboard or monitor. Only 50 or so of the roughly 150-200 units produced have survived, and only six are thought to be in working order. The auction expects the machine to sell for between $80,000 and $125,000.
A working Apple I computer has sold for $374,500 at a Friday Sotheby's auction, the BBC reports. The figure is over twice Sotheby's high estimate, and is the largest ever for an Apple I. Sotheby's commented that two parties ended up battling for the item: one through the auctioneer, acting on behalf of the absent collector, while the victor was a telephone bidder. Neither party has been identified publicly.
One of Apple's original three co-founders, Ronald Wayne, has shown Engadget some rare documents kept from his time with the company. Wayne, 77, is now retired and living in Pahrump, Nevada. Among the most important documents still in his possession are plans and illustrations of a never-produced Apple I enclosure Steve Jobs asked him to build, and a Statement of Withdrawl, which cost Wayne $5 to file and severed his relationship with Apple.
Macitynet was reporting on Tuesday that a university in Turin, Italy has brought an Apple 1 back to life. The Apple 1 was a limited edition computer, with about 200 made prior to Apple's founding in 1977. After the company was founded, the original Apple 1 computers were accepted as trade-ins for the Apple II, so few survive today. The number 82 model, bought at Christie's auction for over $200,000 by Italian collector Marco Boglione, was the Apple restarted today.
Christie's of London is preparing to auction off one of the first Apple computers ever built, at a starting bid of £150,000, writes the Daily Mail. The system is an Apple I, of which about 200 were produced beginning in 1976. It originally sold for $666.66, and had just 8K of memory. No keyboard or video display was included, but support for either put it ahead of rival machines based on switches and LEDs.
A resident of Roseville, California is auctioning off an original Apple I, according to the Detroit Free Press. The computer was the first put into production by Apple, launching in 1976 in a limited run of 200 units. It was distinctive at the time for being produced and sold by a two-man team -- Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs -- and building in its own terminal circuitry, requiring only a separate keyboard and TV set.
