An original Apple computer, hand-built by the company’s founders Steve Jobs And Steve Wozniak 45 years ago, sold for $400,000 at auction Tuesday in the United States. The working Apple-1, the great-grandfather of today’s flashy chrome-and-glass macbook, was expected to fetch up to $600,000 (about Rs 4.44 crore) when it went under the hammer in California. The so-called “Chaffee College” Apple-1 is one of only 200 worth of $2 trillion from garage start-up to megalith at the beginning of the company’s odyssey by Jobs and Wozniak.
What makes it even more rare is that the computer is encased in koa wood – a rich potted wood native to Hawaii. Of the original 200, only a few were built this way. Jobs and Wozniak sold most of the Apple-1s as component parts. The auction house said a computer shop that took delivery of about 50 units decided to encase some of them in wood. “It’s like the holy grail for vintage electronics and computer tech collectors,” Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen told the Los Angeles Times ahead of the bidding. “That really makes it exciting for a lot of people.”
John Moran auctions said the device, which was sold with a 1986 Panasonic video monitor, had only two owners. A listing on the auction house’s website states, “It was originally purchased by an electronics professor at Chaffee College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, who sold it to his student in 1977.”
The Los Angeles Times reported the student — who has not been named — was paid only $650 for it at the time. While the hammer price of $400,000 represents a healthy return on investment for that alumnus, it is well below the record for such an instrument.
A working Apple-1, which hit the market in 2014, was sold by Bonhams for over $900,000. “Many people just want to know what kind of person collects Apple-1 computers and it’s not just people in the tech industry,” Cohen said.
Apple enjoyed success in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but was founded after the departure of Jobs and Wozniak. The company was reinvigorated in the late 1990s, and Jobs was brought back as chief executive. He oversaw the launch of the iPod and later the world-changing iPhone, before his death in 2011.
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