BSS/AFP: An original Apple computer, handcrafted by company founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak 45 years ago, sold for $400,000 at an auction in the United States on Tuesday.
The working Apple-1, the great ancestor of the sleek, chrome-and-glass Macbooks, was expected to fetch $600,000 when it got under the hammer in California.
What makes it even rarer is the fact that the computer is encased in koa wood – a rich pebble wood native to Hawaii. Only a handful of the original 200 were made this way.
“This is kind of the holy grail for collectors of vintage electronics and computer technologies,” Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen told the Los Angeles Times before bidding. “That makes it really exciting for a lot of people.”
“It was originally bought by an electronics professor at Chaffee College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, and then sold to his student in 1977,” a listing on the auction house’s website said.
While the $400,000 hammer price is a healthy return on investment for that former student, it’s far from the record for such a device.
“A lot of people just want to know what kind of person collects Apple-1 computers and not just people in the tech industry,” Cohen said.
The company was revitalized in the late 1990s, and Jobs returned to the fold as CEO.