An old computer with an 11-by-14 green piece of plastic with copper-colored memory chips and wires sticking out of a block of wood may sell for a whopping $500,000 at auction. The reason for the high price is the fact that the computer was built in 1976 by two men named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
The computer is an Apple 1, one of the first Apple devices ever built by the company. It is the forerunner of today's MacBooks, iPads and iPhones. When it originally sold, it cost $666.66, now it goes on auction at Christie's Auction House with the bidding starting at $300,000.
"This is a piece of history that made a difference in the world, it's where the computer revolution started," said Ted Perry, a retired school psychologist who owns the old Apple computer, to KRISTV.com.
Estimates believe this Apple 1 is one of only 30 to 50 of the original 200 that still exists. It contains eight kilobytes of memory, which is a million times less than the average computer today. Last month, a German auction house sold another Apple 1 at auction for a record $671,400, breaking the previous record of $640,000.
The auction at Christie's is titled "First Bytes: Iconic Technology from the Twentieth Century," is active online from June 24 to July 9.
KRISTV.com reports Perry, 70, obtained the computer in either 1979 or 1980 when he traded some other computer equipment he had lying around for the Apple 1. He perused the computer in order to help his teaching. While working as a psychologist in a school in Carmichael, near Sacramento, he noticed teletype machines "made a huge difference" in how a deaf boy responded to learning.
An expert hired by Christie's Auction House tested the old Apple. It still turned on, however, only the motherboard is original. A keyboard, monitor and storage device (an old portable cassette tape deck) were added on later.
