Christie's has just sold one of the original
Some commentators had speculated it could fetch over $1 million, but although it broke the $300,000 low estimate that Christie's set for the computer, it fetched considerably less than Christie's high estimate of $500,000. The price paid was also well below the €516,471 ($663,000) fetched for a functioning Apple-1 in May this year at an auction in Cologne, Germany.
And before you go rummaging through all your obsolete Apple equipment in the garage, it's worth bearing in mind that even rare Apple models that are 25 to 30 years old tend to sell for much less. A 1984 Apple Lisa computer, for example, also offered in Christie's online sale, was expected to fetch $20,000 to $30,000 and a prototype Apple IIGS computer from 1986 was expected to make $10,000 to $15,000.
In fact, neither of those items generated sufficient interest during the auction to meet the reserve price, so were not sold. Apart from the Apple-1, the highest price fetched was for a 1997 Apple computer in an unusual transparent case, which sold for $6250, below its low estimate of $7000.
