Steve Jobs’s Apple-1 goes up for auction, record figures are expected!

It is not the first time that we have talked about a prototype of the glorious Apple-1 going up for auction, the first computer produced by Apple when only Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked on it inside an anonymous garage at 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, Santa Clara County, yet the model preparing to be sold is truly special.

Apparently the Apple-1 in question was not just one of the many placed on the market, but a unit that belonged to Steve Jobs himself and as such it could reach record figures never reached until today by the units of the same production tranche. Let’s try to reconstruct the history of this unit, which as you will see from the photo below is not really in good condition and shows some damage to the card.

The Apple-1 in question was assembled from scratch by Steve Wozniak back in 1976 and the Apple Computer A printed circuit, which you see above, was used by Steve Jobs himself to demonstrate the potential of this machine to the first partner shop, the famous The Byte Shop in Mountain View, the first to market the initial Apple-1 units produced.

It was following that historic meeting that the store ordered 50 assembled machines to sell for the devilish price of $ 666.66. Steve Terrell, the owner of the store, also had a fundamental role in the fate of the company, and to better understand this concept it is good to tell a little anecdote.

Wozniak and Jobs conceived the Apple-1 as part of a do-it-yourself kit aimed at a more savvy and more self-built audience, but Terrell explicitly requested that we manufacture complete and functional units, and perhaps it was precisely that choice. to push the newly born Californian company in the right direction.

The owner of The Byte Shop, also took a series of photos of the first units, which first surfaced in 2012 in the magazine Time Magazinewhich will be combined with the model ready to go to auction.

We are in front of the machine marked with the number 2, which is the one that was believed to have been lost until the authentication by the expert, Corey Cohen, arrived. As anticipated above and clearly visible even to the naked eye, the prototype in question has suffered some damage to the main board and the description of RR Acutions is very clear in this regard.

This prototype resided in the “Apple Garage” property for many years before being given away by Steve Jobs to its current owner about 30 years ago. but as something to repurpose (…) Many of the integrated circuits were pulled from their sockets, as well as the microprocessor and other components, presumably for use on early production Apple-1 computers.

The card appears to have been damaged by pressure on the top right, causing a crack that runs from the area adjacent to the power supply above D12 down through the bottom of the card to the right of A15. It is assumed that the missing piece has been discarded, but it can be reinvented thanks to the photographs of Paul Terrell of the complete card. One of the distinguishing features of the “Apple Computer A” prototype was the use of three orange Sprague Atom capacitors, rather than the familiar “Big Blue” capacitors used on the production Apple Computer 1.

The auction is currently open and has already reached $ 150,000 at the time of writing, but forecasts indicate that $ 500,000 can be exceeded with great ease. But there is a lot of time, in fact, the deadline is August 19 and anyone of you who has the financial availability to try to grab it, can follow the link in the source and participate. Good luck