Made from wood, Apple’s first computer could sell for a million dollars

In 1976, only 200 copies of Apple I had been put on sale by the young company. Only a handle still works.

A wooden Apple-1, the first computer model ever marketed by the Apple company from 1976, is auctioned Tuesday in Southern California and could go for over a million dollars.

The company founded by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs only built a total of 200 Apple-1s, all assembled by hand at Jobs – notably by his little sister Patti, of which 175 units were sold at the time for the sum of $ 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 could be sold even more, say specialists.

Always in working order

A working Apple-1 had been sold over $ 900,000 in 2014 by the Bonhams house.

According to expert Corey Cohen, questioned by the newspaper Los Angeles Times, 60 Apple-1 are listed to date but only 20 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 catalog of the house of John Moran.

It is also accompanied by all the original accessories provided by Apple nearly half a century ago, as well as a monitor from Panasonic.

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

The copy bought at the time by a professor at Chaffey College, put 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.