On Tuesday, an original Apple computer developed by firm founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak 45 years ago will be auctioned in the United States. At an auction in California, the working Apple-1, the great-great-grandfather of today’s sleek chrome-and-glass Macbooks, is expected to fetch up to $600,000.
The ‘Chaffey College’ Apple-1 is one of only 200 produced by Jobs and Wozniak at the commencement of the company’s journey from a ‘garage start up‘ to a $ 2 trillion megalith. The computer is encased in koa wood, a beautifully patinated wood native to Hawaii, which makes it even more unique. Only a few of the initial 200 were created in this manner.
Wozniak and Jobs mainly sold Apple-1s as component parts. According to the auction house, a computer shop that received around 50 units decided to encase some of them in wood.
‘This is kind of the holy grail for vintage electronics and computer tech collectors. That really makes it exciting for a lot of people’, Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen told the Los Angeles Times.
Auction house John Moran Auctioneers said that the equipment, which comes with a 1986 Panasonic video display, has had only two owners.
‘It was originally purchased by an electronics professor at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, who then sold it to his student in 1977’, a listing on the auction house website says.
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According to the Los Angeles Times, the student, who has not been identified, spent only $650 for it at the time. That student is now about to make a tidy profit: a functional Apple-1 that came to the market in 2014 was sold by Bonhams for more than $900,000.
Apple soared to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s but faltered after Jobs and Wozniak left. In the late 1990s, the firm was revitalised, and Jobs was reinstated as CEO. Before his death in 2011, he supervised the debut of the iPod and, subsequently, the game-changing iPhone.
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