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

LO*OP CENTER, INC. lizaloop at loopcenter.org
Sat Aug 1 15:25:22 PDT 2020


Thanks Tom, Brian, Laine and Mike for your thoughtful comments.

When I tell people that I have the first Apple I I usually get wide eyes
and "that must be worth a lot of money. Why don't you sell it?" My own
response is that even $2 million wouldn't fund the work I began LO*OP
Center to do. We want to reimagine education and make learning resources
easily and freely available everywhere on the planet. I believe this is the
spirit that motivated Woz to give us the first Apple. These bragging rights
and connection to history seem more valuable to me than the money.

I'm in basic agreement with you about the significance of the Apple I from
both technical and commercial angles. However, we might tell a different
tale from a history of education perspective. A lot of teachers cut their
teeth on the Apple operating system and wouldn't migrate to any other
brand.  IMHO, just as important as all those little personal computers was
Saal and Shustek's Nestar Systems
<http://www.shustek.com/nestar/photos.htm> that
allowed file sharing across platforms.

Are any of you familiar with this one?
[image: IMG_0984.JPG]

Cheers,

Liza

On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 9:37 AM <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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>
> *Deborah G. Douglas, PhD *• Director of Collections and Curator of
> Science and Technology, MIT Museum; Research Associate, Program in Science,
> Technology, and Society • Room N51-209 • 265 Massachusetts Avenue •
> Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 • ddouglas at mit.edu • 617-253-1766 telephone •
> 617-253-8994 facsimile • http://mitmuseum.mit.edu • she/her/hers
>
>
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>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion
> list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member
> posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list
> archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and
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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)
>
>
>


-- 
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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