If you feel foolish for having spent $10,000 for an Apple Lisa-1 computer in 1983, you hopefully kept it.
A working model recently sold for more than $50,000 at auction.
One of Apple’s biggest commercial failures is now one of the most coveted pieces of vintage tech. The steep price, clunky performance, and unreliable Twiggy floppy disks led to poor sales. Apple made improvements and dropped the price on the Lisa-2, but the launch of the Apple MacIntosh pretty much ended Lisa’s life.
Auction Team Breker, which specializes in tech antiques, sold a Lisa-1 for $50,300 at an auction in Cologne, Germany on Nov. 11, according to AppleWorld.Today. It fetched the top price on the day.
What makes it rare
While this may seem like a handsome sum, it still doesn’t come close to the value of an Apple 1. Some of few units still in existence have sold for $300,000 to $900,000, depending on condition, serial number and whether the demand at the time is high. Less than 70 are known exits because parts on most of the unsold units (about 500 were made) were recycled and used to build the Apple II.
What makes the Lisa-1 in its original form so rare was Apple’s offer to provide owners with free upgrades. Lisa-1 owners could convert their machines to the improved version, Lisa-2, by swapping out front panels and the Twiggy drives. Apple destroyed the parts and Breker estimates that only 30 to 100 original Lisa-1 machines still exist.
The Lisa-1 still holds a valuable place on the tech history timeline. Marketed as a machine for businesses, it was the first personal computer with a graphical mouse-controlled user interface.
It also introduced overlapping windows and pull-down menus. The video below shows how Lisa-1 operated 34 years ago.
Source: AppleWorld.Today
https://youtu.be/yYYg2F0iU9w
David Pierini is a former newspaper writer and long-time photographer. Considered a luddite by most of his friends, they did not believe him when he broke the news that he would be writing for a technology website. He is fascinated by human nature and would love to cultivate stories about the people driving the tech bus. Reach out to him at [email protected].
10 responses to “Rare working Apple Lisa-1 sells for $50,000”
$10,000 in 1983 is the equivalent of $24,765.36 today (inflation for the period being calculated at 147.7%. So it only sold for twice its original cost. Not such a big deal at all, really. Zzzz
you are missing the point a computer over 30 yrs of age sold for $50k.. that in itself is amazing.
I think it is you that is missing the point. Apple are the hype of the moment and their Apple 1 boards go for $500,000+
Troll or clueless he is. 99.99% of all old computer gear isn’t worth scrap. This “Mac” is worth $50k which IS amazing.
See my above comment and keep your slanderous viewpoint to your ego-driven selfish, thanks
LOL!! slanderous? Funny kid, funny!
Perhaps you are braindead I do not know or perhaps you simply don’t understand the import of using these words: Troll or clueless. I imagine you are yet another dumbed down victim of society.
Look big dill, get back on the Xani’s and chill.
OK you can have the last word, go for it.
Still have my Lisa 2, with profile 5MB drive keyboard and mouse. :-)