'Apple Computer A' Prototype Apple-1 Owned by Steve Jobs Heads to Auction

[mrgraff]

I wonder what was the reason for that strange devil pricing. What about charging $699 for it? The other price just makes it sound like a scam.

Apple I sold for $500 with a 33% markup; Wozniak liked the repeating digits.

 

[IzzyMandelbaum]

Before anyone puts in a bid on this, I verified it will not play Duke Nukem 3D.

 

[mrgraff]

Before anyone puts in a bid on this, I verified it will not play Duke Nukem 3D.

AppleWorks feels snappier.

 

[Engie]

In related news, the motherboard for the first Android phone ever made was sold for a record breaking price yesterday on the exclusive and upscale auctioneering site called eBay.

Bidding was fierce, with 17 participants engaging in a harsh, no prisoners taken, bidding war.

The lucky winner who was able to walk away with the rare, one of a kind item, came in with a bold bid of $1.43 USD in the final minutes of the frenzied auction. The remaining 16 bidders just couldn’t compete with the big spender who was ultimately successful in scoring the prized historical item. “This item will go down in history as a significant technical acheivement and is the inspiration for all modern phones made today”, claimed the winner, John Smith, while being interviewed in front of his domicile, a cardboard box.

 

[Doomtomb]

I would toss it in the can but that's just me

 

[JosephAW]

Must have happened during one of SJ anger fits

 

[kc9hzn]

I wonder what was the reason for that strange devil pricing. What about charging $699 for it? The other price just makes it sound like a scam.

I feel like it might have been intended as a bit of a countercultural joke. Both Jobs and Woz were roughly the age of immature college students, after all, so that probably isn’t far from the sort of joke they’d make. Plus, it was $666 even with the retail margins. Perhaps the store itself contributed to the price?

Of course, it’s easy to forget today that the Apple I wasn’t really a mass produced computer, like even the Apple II or Apple III were. Basically, Jobs and Woz were soldering the chips to each board in the garage when they had a new order come in. That mentality could have had an impact on the pricing, as well. (I.E. Perhaps they felt they couldn’t sell it for a price point ending in $x99.99 because that would be overpromising it, as though it were a genuine commercial product.)

 

[Anonymous Freak]

My Apple II was 100% repairable (as long as the ICs were available for sale), it even came with its full schematics and ROM dump. I don't know for the Apple I.

It was also a big larger that current version... and even more expensive (in inflation-compensated currency).

There are Apple-1 reproduction kits available. 100% of the parts for an Apple-1 are readily available. It is "perfectly repairable" with no surface-mount soldered components. And some of the kits (and end users back in the day) even use sockets for all the chips, making them trivial to swap.