If you think an Apple Watch Edition is rare, you should try getting your hands on an Apple-1 computer.
Only 63 are known to exist, but you can nab one now — provided you cough up the necessary cash. A working Apple-1, owned by its original purchaser and his family for more than 36 years, has appeared on eBay and is currently carrying a bid of $20,600.
That may sound steep but the Apple-1 in this case is one of just 13 surviving early production units of the machine, all hand-numbered on the backside of the board. This version is No. 22, while No. 70 sold to the Henry Ford Museum in September 2014 for an iWatering $905,000.
Guess that $20,600 isn’t sounding so bad right about now.
In the book The First Apple, the brother of original owner Joey Copson is interviewed about his memories of the machine:
“Joey got it brand new from a shop down in San Jose called the Byte Shop. That’s who he bought it through, but I’m almost sure it came to him via the mail, through a package. I was there the day he opened it, and he was all excited about this green board with black chips. He’s opening it up and I’m going, “Wow, this has got to be something really bitchin’.” And he opens it up, oh, wow! But to him, he’s almost bowing down to it, and I’m like, “What are you so excited for? He was like a kid opening up the best present he ever got at Christmas. It was as if you got the BB gun you always wanted. I remember when the Apple II came out, and he said, “They’ll give me a big discount if I trade in the Apple-1,” and he goes, “No, I’m not going to. I don’t care, I’m keeping the Apple-1.”
The Apple-1 comes complete with an original Apple-1 Cassette board, an original clam shell case and date-stamped keyboard, and vintage Sony Solid State TV-115 television monitor. A portion of proceeds will go to the ALS Association, to help cure Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Source: eBay
