Apple’s retail origins were far less glossy than today’s glass shrines known as Apple Stores. If a dealer wanted to sell an Apple II in 1978, the fledgling computer company provided a 4-foot-by-5-foot acrylic sign in a metal frame. On the face was a rainbow Apple logo over the words “apple computer.” No capital letters.
Bidding on one of those original signs starts at $20,000 in an online auction that ends in three days.
A rare piece of Apple memorabilia goes up for sale in March. A pair of Apple sneakers from the 1990s will be auctioned off to someone who wants to remember a troubled time in the company’s history.
Rare Apple computers made in the 1970s sell for amazing sums, but a bit of company memorabilia is up for auction at a price an average Mac fan might be able to afford. Which isn’t to say that a 3.5-inch disk signed by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is expected to go for cheap.
A prototype Apple Macintosh used in the development of MacWrite can be yours, if you can scratch up about $180,000. It’s almost unique because of a disk drive different from the one used when this revolutionary computer shipped.
Bidding was apparently hot and heavy for a computer manual for the Apple-1, this company’s very first computer. In a multi-day online auction for this rare bit of tech history, the top bid was under $10,000 only a few days ago but in the end the document sold for $12,956.
Want to show your Apple-loving significant other that you really care about them? If so — and you happen to have $150,000-$250,000 at your disposal — you might want to participate in a new Sotheby’s auction for a diamond ring designed by none other than Sir Jony Ive and BFF Marc Newson.
The one-of-a-kind ring was designed to raise money for (RED), a charity that raises money to fight HIV and AIDS in Africa. Over the years, Apple has raised millions of dollars for the charity — and Ive has had the chance to design one-off objects such as minimalist desks in the process.
