[SIGCIS-Members] eBay is selling an Apple 1 for $1.5 million
Evan Koblentz
evan at snarc.net
Sun Aug 2 18:01:27 PDT 2020
Tom,
I agree with your thoughts here.
A detail: >> 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
Original Apple IIs, especially the earliest revisions, are going for
four figures now among hobbyists. I've seen some as high as $2K-$4K.
Even the early revisions of the II+ are getting up there in hobbyist
prices, because Apple kept selling the straight II for a short time
after the II+ introduction, thus some II+ computers are older than some
original IIs. However it's the later II+ systems (which are most of
them) and of course the //e, //c, and IIgs which are readily available
for two/three figures. Various sub-versions go for more, such as the //e
Platinum, //c Plus, and IIgs Woz Edition.
On 8/1/20 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
> <mailto: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
> <mailto: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
> <mailto:thomas.haigh at gmail.com>> <thomas.haigh at gmail.com
> <mailto: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
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> facsimile • http://mitmuseum.mit.edu • she/her/hers
>
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>
> --
>
> Liza Loop
>
> Executive Director, LO*OP Center, Inc.
>
> Guerneville, CA 95446
>
> www.loopcenter.org <http://www.loopcenter.org>
>
> 650 619 1099 (between 8 am and 10 pm Pacific time only please)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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