14 DAY TRIAL // The first computer that Steve Jobs ever sold from his parents’ garage is up for sale for an estimated $161,600 - $242,400 at Christie’s in London. The lucky (and wealthy geek) setting their mind to buy it will also be glad to receive a commercially rare letter from Steve Jobs with the unit.
According to the auction website, this is the 82nd Apple-1 computer of the estimated 200 ever made, and was hand built by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak himself. The unit was “despatched from the garage of Steve Jobs’ parents’ house – the return address on the original packaging present here,” according to Christie’s.
The Apple I was Apple's first commercially successful product. It was demonstrated in April 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California. Sold as an assembled circuit board, it lacked basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case.
The Apple I, also referred to as the Apple-1, was, by all accounts, a personal computer. Each one of them was designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak.
Steve Jobs came up with the idea of selling the computer.
The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 at a price of $666.66. The rather strange price reflects Wozniak's fondness for repeating digits, but also the one-third markup added to the original $500 price it was sold for at a local shop.
Unlike other hobbyist computers of the day, which were sold as kits, the Apple I was a fully assembled circuit board containing about 30 chips.
Users still had to provide their own case, power supply, keyboard, and display to turn it into a "working" computer. An optional board providing a cassette interface for storage was later released at a cost of $75, while low-cost monitors were already available.
As of 2008, an estimated 30 to 50 Apple Is are still known to exist, making it a very rare collector's item.