I love the ‘almost verified’ as a category. This just subtly hints to the human/cultural values behind it (documentation, restoration, preservation efforts), not only the hardware or as many comments here speculate on; its value in coins.
All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers
#32I'm not sure why, but I vaguely expected Woz to have at least one
Re: All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers
#33A few years ago, I attended a test powering on of #41 'Frank Anderson' at the Polytechnic University of Turin. It was a truly exciting and interesting experience.
Re: All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers
#34If you want an Apple I, there is one up for auction right now. Current bid is $109,919 but it will surely go for much more. https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/35045050724601...
For that amount of money it’s incredible we aren’t seeing fakes…
Re: All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers
#35Gotta be honest, if I saw this sitting next to a dumpster I'd probably think "what is this worthless circuitboard doing here." and then I'd take it to properly e-waste it only to later find out: "That was worth how much!?"
That literally happened: a woman dropped off computer junk at an e-waste facility in Milpitas in 2015. The facility found an Apple I in the stuff and sold it for $200,000. They tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with the woman to split the money. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19665632
The Apple 1 registry site says that it was likely a marketing stunt by the e-waste facility (https://www.apple1registry.com/en/theapple1.html):
> The story of an almost-destroyed Apple-1 found in a recycling center is a bit strange. There’s no proof it's true. No picture of the Apple-1 has been published, yet the company was in the news for a long time. After gaining so much attention, many people sent old computers to them. Numerous requests for a photo or info went unanswered. No Apple-1 expert or collector was ever contacted by the recycling company.
As far as I can tell, there's no public record of the sale, the buyer never came forward, and all the photos of the computer from news articles and stuff are stock images of other Apple 1s.
Re: All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers
#36If you want an Apple I, there is one up for auction right now. Current bid is $109,919 but it will surely go for much more. https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/35045050724601...
In March of this year, an Apple-1 sold on the same site for 375k usd
https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/34999140714600...
Re: All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers
#37What an amazing labor of love to catalog all these machines. Some of the stories behind each individual machine are amazing. I remember when Fry's Electronics (was it Palo Alto or Sunnyvale?) had one on display.
Man... tangentially, is there a coffee table book about Fry's yet? I remember in the dot com days they had a lounge pianist there as well as a cafeteria? And also, oddly, adult magazines by the check out lines.
Would love a coffee table book of Fry's. The themes alone would make good viewing!
Re: All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers
#38If you want an Apple I, there is one up for auction right now. Current bid is $109,919 but it will surely go for much more. https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/35045050724601...
For that amount of money it’s incredible we aren’t seeing fakes…
Or just reproducing it and selling it on the basis that it works exactly the same way as the original...
I'm slightly mystified at the sums collectors items sell for. It seems intuitive to me that their prices should be some function of their inherent values, however that's calculated. It could even be many times that number but it should at least be tethered to reality.
Re: All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers
#39Re: All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers
#40If you want an Apple I, there is one up for auction right now. Current bid is $109,919 but it will surely go for much more. https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/35045050724601...
For that amount of money it’s incredible we aren’t seeing fakes…
I previously asked about how hard it would be to create a forgery and got a nice answer here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29173562#29175946
TLDR: it would be very hard, perhaps next to impossible to create one, and then you'd still have the issue how to convince people it's real, given that the existing ones are pretty well documented and accounted for.