First Apple computer ready for auction

Created in 1976, the Apple-1 was only worth $666.66 and was one of an estimated 200 produced by the hand of co-founder Steve Wosniak. The original version, sold without a keyboard, monitor or power supply, came equipped with only 8 kilobytes of RAM, which is small potatoes compared to today’s memory standards.

A major drawback of the Apple-1 was the lack of a floppy drive. The programs were loaded onto the memory from cassette tapes that were sold separately, making the total invoice for the Apple-1 a mere $741.66. One tape, labeled “BASIC,” that was used to load programming language, will be included in the sale at the auction.

Other items said to be included will be original packaging, manuals, cassette interface, basic tape, early documentation and provenance and a rare letter from Steve Jobs.

Though the Apple-1 was the first of its kind, it was soon replaced in 1977 by the more famous Apple II. Just two months ago, another Apple-1 was sold on Ebay for $22,766.66 with only the cassette interface.

The auction will be at Christie’s auction house in London on November 23rd and feature the the Apple-1 alongside manuscripts and papers by Charles Babbage, Alan Turing and more. The Apple-1 is expected to sell for an estimated $242,400.

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