Apple-1

Functioning Apple-1 with unique accessory lot sells for $471K at auction

Chance Miller | May 26 2019 - 8:09 am PT

Earlier this month, a functioning Apple-1 hit the auction block through Christie’s auction house in the UK. The machine was expected to fetch as much as $630,000, with the auction house providing a range of $378,000 to $630,000.

With the auction now closed, the Apple-1 has fetched a final price of around $471,000. That puts it near the lower-end of the expected range, but still more than other Apple-1 units have sold for recently. For instance, one sold for $210,000 last year, but others have gone for as high as $815,000.

The Apple-1 auctioned this month was initially acquired by a man named Rick Conte in 1977, and donated to a non-profit organization in 2009. In 2010, it was purchased for a private collection and later acquired by the people now selling it in September of 2014.

This Apple-1 was unique in several ways. It was built directly into a briefcase and fully functional, while the auction lot also included a handful of different accessories. The accessory lot included several pieces of unique paperwork, the “extremely rare first manual” issued by Apple Computer, a Panasonic cassette tape recorder, a Motorola microprocessor, and more. You can read the full accessory lot on the Christie’s website.

There are believed to be around 80 Apple-1 units still in existence today, with Apple having initially built approximately 200 of them. Around 15 of those still in existence today are in museum collections. It’s unclear what the new owners of the lot auctioned through Christie’s plan to do with their unit.

To learn more about this Apple-1 auction lot, you can head to the Christie’s website for more information.

Read more:

Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.