Today in Apple history: Rare Apple-1 sells for crazy money

November 23, 2010: An early Apple-1 computer manufactured in 1976, complete with its original packaging and a letter signed by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, sells for $210,000.

At the time, it ranks as the most expensive personal computer ever sold at auction. That makes sense, because it’s an incredibly rare find. The working Apple-1 is thought to be one of only approximately 50 still in existence.

Italian collector buys original Apple computer

Italian businessman and private collector Marco Boglione bought the Apple-1 in question. The sportswear company owner possessed an extensive archive of personal computers, including other rare Apple models.

“I’m a guy that has been dealing with these machines, let me say loving these machines, and really being attached to these machines, since I was a kid,” Boglione told The Seattle Times in an interview shortly after the auction.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, on hand for the Apple-1 auction, vouched for the machine’s good working order. Boglione announced that the Apple-1 would go on display in Italy’s Museum of the Information Technology Revolution, in his hometown.

Apple-1 auction: A price worth paying

2010 also marked the end of Apple CEO Steve Jobs‘ innovative string of hardware hits. That year, the iPad joined the iMac, iBook, iPod and iPhone — products that defined Jobs’ legendary second stint running Apple. (Jobs died in 2011.)

At the time, observers couldn’t stop talking about the amount of money Boglione paid for the Apple-1. The $210,000 purchase price dwarfed the computer’s original $666.66 price tag when manufactured in July 1976. (It was also around 10 times more than you might have paid for an Apple-1 during Cupertino’s bad old days in the 1990s.)

In retrospect, it looks like Boglione bagged a bargain. Just four years later, in 2014, another Apple-1 computer sold at auction for an incredible $905,000, between two and three times the expected asking price of $300,000 to $500,000.

And in September 2024, an Apple-1 with a very special provenance went for even more: $945,000.

This machine came with a one-of-a-kind modification that made it “effectively the early prototype for how the Apple II computer would function,” according to the Christie’s auction listing. 

“In 1985 this unique unit was removed from its place in Jobs’ office by Don Hutmacher (along with a pound of coffee), after Jobs was dismissed from Apple and engineers were allowed to take items from his office,” the listing says.

This remains the most ever spent on an Apple-1 — a computer with just 8KB of RAM and an inexpensive, 8-bit 6502 microprocessor. 

Apple only built around 200 Apple-1 units in total. The number still in existence today is significantly smaller than that, due to both age and the fact that Apple offered a trade-in deal for the significantly upgraded Apple II when it launched in 1977.

Luke Dormehl

Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.