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September 2018

First Ever Apple Computer Reaches $375,000 At Auction

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Designed and hand built by Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple in 1976, the Apple 1 was a bare circuit board provided without power supply, monitor or keyboard. It could be used for playing games, running the BASIC operating system or developing programs.

As a Hewlett-Packard employee, Wozniak originally offered HP the rights to the Apple -1. It declined.

To fund the project Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500 (£318), while Jobs sold his VW Microbus. 200 units were created in total and 175 sold.

It went on sale in 1976 for $666.66 (around £545) and it was the world’s first low-cost, assembled computer.

With the release of the Apple 2, Jobs and Wozniak wanted to reclaim some of the original boards used in the Apple 1, so they offered trade-in discounts against the new model. The boards which were reclaimed were then destroyed explaining why this product is so rare.

There are approximately 60 Apple 1 computers remaining, with only eight working examples. The Apple Registry has a list of them all.

The auction took place in Boston, Massachusetts, on Tuesday and  the final bid was won by an anonymous businessman who placed his bid online.

The highest price ever paid for an Apple -1 was $905,000 (£575,900) by the Henry Ford museum complex in October 2014.

In May 2015 a box of electronic goods was dropped off at a tech recycling business in Silicon Valley. This box contained a 1976 Apple 1 which was subsequently sold at auction for $200,000. Before chucking out or recycling computers, laptops, mobile phones, software or hardware it’s worth doing a quick Google check to see if they are an older, rarer technology which may fetch you a pound or two.