As long ago as 1976, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak created the company’s first computer, the Apple I (or Apple -1). Out of the 200 made, only 175 of these were sold at the time, only 50-60 remain and only eight of these are still fully functioning making them a highly sought-after collectors item worth a significant amount more than the original $666.66 retail price.
Germain auctioneer Breker announced last year that they will be auctioning off one of these functioning computers complete with the original manual and documentation, motherboard, cassette recorder and even a record of telephone conversations between Wozniak and Steve Jobs in 1977.
Previous Apple-1 auctions over the year have seen these models sell for up to $905,000 (at a Bonhams auction in New York in 2014) so this one is expected to fetch several hundreds of thousands of dollars particularly as it is the “best-preserved example of an Apple-1 computer to appear on the market”, according to Breker.
“The Apple-1 is already a legendary highlight of the great, young history of the computer,” a spokesperson for the auctioneers said. This model is said to have the original NTI sign, the serial number 01-0073 and logged as the fourteenth in the register.
The auction will take place in Cologne, Germany on May 20.