How would you like to own a piece of history? Well, now you can, as renowned auction house Christie’s has announced the upcoming auction of an Apple 1 computer that once sat upon Steve Jobs’ desk during the earliest days of his newly formed company, Apple. What’s more, the piece is going to auction as part of the personal collection of Paul G. Allen. Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, and was a legendary collector of art and pieces of technological history until his death in 2018.
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Only 200 Apple 1 computers were ever produced, and of those, only 70 motherboards can presently be accounted for. The Apple 1 was the concept that lead Jobs and Steve Wozniak to sell their possessions to raise funds to go into business as Apple.
From the item’s Lot Essay:
“One of the 200 was held back by the company, and had an EPROM added to reduce the time needed to load BASIC on starting it up, with the intention, probably, of its being used an demo unit. This is the only known Apple I which made use of the prototyping area. A 4K EPROM containing the Apple Monitor and Integer BASIC bypasses the original Apple I PROM monitor and is effectively the early prototype for how the Apple II computer would function. In 1985 this unique unit was removed from its place in Jobs’ office by Don Hutmacher (along with a pound of coffee), after Jobs was dismissed from Apple and engineers were allowed to take items from his office.”
The auction will take place a week from today, on September 12th, and is estimated to fetch anywhere from $500,000 to $800,000.
