[SIGCIS-Members] eBay is selling an Apple 1 for $1.5 million

Sat Aug 1 11:07:57 PDT 2020

I worked with Steve Wozniak and Tom Coughlin on the Apple I IEEE Milestone
(which was scheduled to be dedicated in May, but has been delayed by the
COVID crisis).  The description of its significance, etc., is here
<http://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Milestone-Proposal:Introduction_of_the_Apple_I_Computer:_1976>,
including this citation for the bronze plaque (and notice that we used
Roman Numeral I and not Arabic Numeral 1):

*Introduction of the Apple I Computer, 1976*The features essential for a
personal computer were first encompassed by the Apple I: a fully-assembled
circuit board with dynamic RAM, video interface, keyboard, mass storage and
a high-level programming language. This affordable computer platform
triggered a software industry that grew as the sophistication of these
essential features grew, and the Apple I thus helped launch the personal
computer revolution.

For reference here is the Apple II
<http://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Milestone-Proposal:Introduction_of_the_Apple_I_Computer:_1976>
citation:

*Introduction of the Apple II Computer, 1977-78*The Apple II spurred
software and hardware suppliers to help create the worldwide personal
computing industry. It was the first low-cost computer to offer quick
start-up, pre-addressed standard expansion slots, processor RAM-based
bit-mapped NTSC color graphics and random access storage in a handsome
compact package. It had an economy of design with a BASIC interpreter and
assembler in ROM as well as gaming and graphics features.

Brian Berg

On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 10:54 AM Laine Nooney <laine.nooney at gmail.com> wrote:

> Is there an earlier example of a commercialized, consumer grade
> microcomputer with on-board video terminal display and keyboard
> interface, than the Apple I? i believe the SOL-20 comes out later in 1976
> (but i'd be happy to proven wrong here!) (and this might require debate wrt
> to how we determine a date on the "release" of the Apple I)
>
> this feels like the most significant part of the Apple I--the fact that
> its design ethos was based on extending a TV terminal's capacity through
> the embedding of a microprocessor, rather than the more progressivist,
> linear assumption that Wozniak was trying to make his own version of a more
> user-friendly Altair. it's a productive complication of the computer
> history timeline.
>
> Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/>
>
> MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU <http://www.nyu.edu/>
> Assistant Professor
>
> -Need to make an appt? Click, don't email: https://bit.ly/2GIHuK0
> -Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 12:37 PM <thomas.haigh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hmm. I posted this as a kind of quirky head scratching moment, but Lisa
>> asks a valid question so let me attempt an answer informed by our recent
>> work on the Revised History of Modern Computing. The “unhinged” comment
>> referred not to the specific seller, but to the market that might make such
>> a price at least somewhat plausible. (Apparently the listing started at
>> $1.75 million last year, so maybe a further reduction will follow).
>>
>>
>>
>> First off, the real competence to answer this question would come from
>> economic sociology within which there’s a thriving group of scholars
>> looking at the pricing and collection of artworks. There’s a also a
>> literature on collections and collectors that goes back to Walter Benjamin,
>> and an associated steam looking at “authenticity” and the reproduction of
>> cultural artifacts.
>>
>>
>>
>> Like artwork the price of the Apple 1 would be set by collectors and
>> auction houses guided by an infrastructure of authentication, evaluation,
>> and (as Debbie shared) previous sales of similar items. Everyone involved
>> in that process has an incentive to see values rise. Compared to a van
>> Gough, Picasso, or Banksy the Apple 1 in question is rather affordable. But
>> unlike traditional artworks, where uniqueness is the point, the Apple 1 is
>> only accidentally rare.
>>
>>
>>
>> So the parallel is stronger with well-established expensive collectibles
>> like classic sportscars. Today’s Bloomberg reports a Ferrari sold for $3
>> million at auction. I assume this is the direct model being followed with
>> Apple 1s. There’s also the recent boom in prices for unopened Nintendo
>> cartridges, the fixation on pristine condition creating an artificial
>> scarcity for a mass produced item for which supply generally exceeds
>> current demand. (
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/business/video-games-wata-heritage.html)
>> Like Star Wars toys, old comics, and the former bubble in baseball cards, I
>> think the conventional explanation is that rich men of a certain age want
>> to own the things they dreamed of having as a boy.
>>
>>
>>
>> No child ever dreamed of having an Apple 1 and hung its poster on the
>> wall. Actual customers quickly traded them in for better machines. And it’s
>> a rather ugly bare circuit board, though the hand built wooden case that’s
>> also part of the eBay offering does evoke the amateur nature of the early
>> personal computing community. But there is certainly a lot of money
>> floating around the tech industry and so (entering my actual area of
>> expertise) the question is how the Apple 1 became the definitive early
>> personal computing artifact that a museum or wealthy collector might
>> justify spending so much money on.
>>
>>
>>
>> Being a famous _*personal*_ computer certainly helps. A PDP-1 or Univac
>> 1 would be more historically significant and rarer, but you’d need to know
>> something about history to appreciate that and they are all rather bulky.
>> Fewer people feel personal ties to those technologies, and for the 1950s
>> computers their generations have faded out. (IIRC there was a crash in
>> Elvis memorabilia a few years ago, as the people who cared about Elvis left
>> the marketplace). The Cray 1 is a lot better looking than an Apple 1, more
>> technologically interesting (miles of hardwired connections), and was
>> actually expensive at the time. The one and only prototype Cray 4 processor
>> fetched just $37,500 when auctioned (
>> https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22964/lot/78/), and what claimed to be
>> a piece of the Serial 001 Cray 1 from Los Alamos failed to sell for GBP 550
>> (https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/24/cray_1_gate_module_ebay/). Some
>> significant portions of ENIAC, which does have name recognition, are not
>> controlled by the Smithsonian but I don’t think any kind of secondary
>> market has developed for them.
>>
>>
>>
>> The Apple 1 was not, in itself, a particularly important or successful
>> machine. It also wasn’t a “first” anything, except the first Apple product.
>> It gets two sentences in our book, which serve as a bridge from the
>> Homebrew Computer Club to the Apple II. The Altair 8800 was much “firstier”
>> and did far more to establish the personal computer category, though people
>> who care about such things have documented many earlier personal computers
>> and microprocessor based machines. An Altair sold at auction for $8,125 in
>> 2017.  (https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/24495/lot/108/) Cromemcos,
>> IMSAIS, the Processor Technology Sol, etc. were also more visible in 1976
>> than the Apple 1. The Apple 1 matters because it led to the Apple II, but
>> even that was not the most initially important of the three mass produced
>> personal computers launched in 1977. The TRS-80 sold much better for
>> several years (allegedly until 1981). Steve Wozniak is said to have
>> produced an impressively efficient design, but at the time Chuck Peddle was
>> more renowned as a designer of elegant circuits (having produced the MOS
>> 6502 chip the Apple was based on) and according to Wikipedia he also
>> designed the third of the 1977 trio, the Commodore Pet 2001 (currently
>> being auctioned on eBay for $211.50). So even the Apple II didn’t really
>> establish itself as _*the*_ important machine of its generation years
>> later. The Apple IIe, which outsold the 1970s models many times over to
>> account for the bulk of Apple II sales, wasn’t launched until 1983 (well
>> after the IBM PC which complicates the traditional succession story).
>>
>>
>>
>> Rarity clearly matters (which the Apple 1 achieved by not being a
>> particularly strong seller). Wozniak’s cult following is important, but
>> Wozniak himself is prouder of the Apple II and proudest of the Apple II
>> disk controller. You can easily buy the former for $150 in working
>> condition, and the latter for about $20. The IBM PC matters a lot more to
>> history, but those also cost just a few hundred dollars. A very low serial
>> number might make a difference, but not enough to add several zeros to the
>> prices.
>>
>>
>>
>> The thing that really sets the Apple 1 apart is the fact that Apple is
>> the world’s most successful company and many people feel a personal
>> connection to it and its products. A billionaire can point to it and say
>> “The first Apple, very rare (subtext, very expensive)” and visitors won’t
>> need a history lecture to appreciate the importance. The story of Woz and
>> Jobs in the garage has become the paradigmatic story of innovation, told in
>> movies, documentaries, a bestselling books. (Misapplication of the Woz/Jobs
>> template crippled the first season of *Halt and Catch Fire*, so if you
>> haven’t seen it skip that and start with season 2). There’s the allure of
>> thinking that one or both handled this circuit board in that garage. Add
>> the rarity of its first product to that cult following and the amount of
>> money percolating in Silicon Valley and you have a unique combination of
>> factors converging to pump up the value of a computer that didn’t, in
>> itself, much matter to the course of history.
>>
>>
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>>
>>
>> Tom
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> *On Behalf Of *LO*OP
>> CENTER, INC.
>> *Sent:* Friday, July 31, 2020 11:34 PM
>> *To:* Deborah Douglas <ddouglas at mit.edu>
>> *Cc:* Sigcis <members at sigcis.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [SIGCIS-Members] eBay is selling an Apple 1 for $1.5
>> million
>>
>>
>>
>> I feel like I ought to say something in response to this thread but I'm
>> not sure what. Do you-all think the first Apple 1 should be worth more than
>> the others? Pricing collectables is sooooo difficult.
>>
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>>
>>
>> Liza
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 4:13 PM Deborah Douglas <ddouglas at mit.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> For those who are curious here are some of the prices paid for Apple 1
>> computers in the past 6 years.
>>
>>
>>
>> 2014: $910,000 (Charity auction)
>> https://www.cultofmac.com/498888/apple-history-celebration-apple-1-auction/
>>
>> 2016: $815,000 (Charity auction)
>> https://www.cultofmac.com/498888/apple-history-celebration-apple-1-auction/
>>
>> 2018: $375,000
>> https://www.cnet.com/news/rare-apple-1-sells-at-auction-for-over-500-times-original-price/
>>
>> 2019: $470,000
>> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/28/wozniak-built-apple-1-computer-sold-for-almost-500000-at-christies.html
>>
>> 2020: $458,711.25.
>> https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/13/rare-functional-apple-1-computer-sold-at-auction-for-458711
>>
>>
>>
>> Debbie Douglas
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 31, 2020, at 6:24 PM, mike at willegal.net wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> I talked to Krishna a few years ago.  I don’t think he is unhinged, but I
>> can’t imagine any Apple 1 fetching that price, even though it appears to be
>> one of the nicer survivors.  It’s funny, when I first became interested in
>> Apple 1s, condition mattered little, but now the market has evolved to the
>> point where condition seems to matter.  Note that the Henry Ford Museum
>> paid around 1 million dollars for an Apple 1 several years ago, though that
>> price hasn’t been approached since.
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Mike Willegal
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 31, 2020, at 4:05 PM, <thomas.haigh at gmail.com> <
>> thomas.haigh at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.ebay.com/i/174195921349. There is at least a “Make offer”
>> button.
>>
>>
>>
>> I have to say that this is more than a little unhinged, possibly a
>> further sign (as if one were needed) of the approach of the end times.
>> Though I did recently pay $250 for a working Apple IIe with disk drives and
>> monitor. Simple mathematics suggests for a Bezos, Musk or Zuckerberg this
>> would be a very much smaller purchase relative to net worth.
>>
>>
>>
>> Full description at
>> http://vi.raptor.ebaydesc.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemDescV4&item=174195921349&category=162075&pm=1&ds=0&t=1582079090000&ver=0
>>
>>
>>
>> Also an entry in the Apple 1 registry (which of course):
>> https://www.apple1registry.com/en/79.html.
>>
>>
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>>
>> Tom
>>
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>>
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>> Science and Technology, MIT Museum; Research Associate, Program in Science,
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>>
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>> --
>>
>> Liza Loop
>>
>> Executive Director, LO*OP Center, Inc.
>>
>> Guerneville, CA 95446
>>
>> www.loopcenter.org
>>
>> 650 619 1099 (between 8 am and 10 pm Pacific time only please)
>>
>>
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