Apple I sells for "only" $365,000 at auction
With the original Apple computers - AKA Apple I or Apple-1 - being as scarce as the proverbial hens teeth, prices for the units hand-built by Steve Wozniak and sold by Steve Jobs have been soaring into the stratosphere. As an example, in October of 2014, the Henry Ford Museum purchased an Apple I for US$905,000. Well, yesterday a working Apple I was sold by Christies auction house for a paltry $365,000.
Out of the 200 or so Apple I units produced in the early days of Apple, only 63 are known to exist and the majority of those are no longer in working order. We're not sure why the device sold yesterday - which was apparently in mint condition - was such a relative bargain.
That selling price represents an increase in value of more than 547 times the original Apple I retail price, which was $666.66. That's not a bad return on investment if the computer was sold by its original owner, although he/she would have done much better to invest that money in Apple stock back when the company went public in 1980.
