Wooden model of Apple’s first computer could sell for over $ 1 million at auction

Cult, even mythical. A wooden Apple-1, the first computer model marketed by the apple firm from 1976, was auctioned on Tuesday, November 9, in southern California and could go for more than $ 1 million ( approximately 860,000 euros).

The company founded by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs only built a total of 200 Apple-1s, all hand-assembled at Jobs, most of which sold at the time for $ 666.66.

The copy auctioned by the John Moran auction house in Monrovia, near Los Angeles, is estimated between 400,000 and 600,000 dollars, but it could be snapped up even more, say specialists. A working Apple-1 was sold for more than $ 900,000 in 2014 by Bonhams.

Purchased in 1977 by a student from his teacher

According to expert Corey Cohen, questioned by the newspaper Los Angeles Times, sixty Apple-1 are listed to date but only twenty of them, including the one sold by the house John Moran, still work.

The copy is all the more original because it has an exotic wood case, the koa, native to the Hawaiian Islands, a rarity that has earned it a place in a sale otherwise devoted to contemporary art and design. . There are only six known examples of Apple-1 with koa housing, according to the John Moran house catalog.

The proposed lot includes the original Apple-1 “NTI” motherboard, connection and power cables, as well as a 1986 Panasonic video monitor.

In 1976, the Apple-1s were among the first personal computer models already assembled (with the components already soldered onto the motherboard in particular) but they often sold without a case or keyboard.

The copy bought at the time by a professor at Chaffey College, went on sale Tuesday, “Is a bit like the holy grail for collectors of electronics and vintage computers”, assures Corey Cohen. This professor sold it in 1977 to one of his students, who kept it to this day and chose to remain anonymous.