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Apple 1?

Assume they are all fakes on Ebay. A real one would end up at an auction house for more money.
 
I don't really get who is paying so much for these dusty old boards - or why.
 
pearce_jj said:
I don't really get who is paying so much for these dusty old boards - or why.
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Pretty sure this is real, but it's got lots of damage from modifications and eBay is the worst place to sell and Apple-1. The owner would have been better off in a private sale where there were no fees. eBay doesn't attract the high end collectors who are looking for something like an Apple-1, but auction houses have a 12-24 month wait right now to sell one and upfront it could cost you 20k in promotional fees. That's what happened with most of the big $$$ sales. Plus those units worked.
 
Just ended $60,300 not too far off the last eBay sale of a damaged board a few years ago, the Huston-2 board. Funny thing is not a few weeks after the Huston-2 sale we had a record Apple-1 sale of a working system for many times that amount.

So I guess we have established a poor condition Apple-1 fetches between 60k and 75k on eBay and a working unit fetches between 300k and 910k at an art auction depending on the condition of the board and accessories.
 
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Chuck(G) said:
The new Beanie Baby.
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Totally different. With beanie babies people knew they would be collectibles so they hoarded and protected them, which eventually causes a crash. Artificially making something rare doesn't make it like an apple-1 or any other valuable piece of artwork. Baseball cards or comic books are more like it. With the Apple-1 being a rookie card. How many of us destroyed a card that could pay for a kids college today by putting it in the spokes of our bicycle when we were 8 years old. So the surviving cards are worth $$$ and the better the condition the higher the price with the best condition ones going for big money since they are the rarest.

Cheers,
Corey
 
Just like Beanie Babies. In the vintage computer world, rarity does not always imply value. I've got a few very rare working small computers with documentation that would probably not fetch more than $500 on eBay.

The perceived value of an Apple 1 bears on (1) the hero-worship of Steve Jobs and (2) Apple fanboys in general. As an early 1970s computer, it's not really that fantastically unusual.
 
Just like Beanie Babies. In the vintage computer world, rarity does not always imply value.
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Hence why my previous employer still holds onto his boxed IBM 5150 set. It might of been around a grand back in 2009, but complete sets have not sold like that in years and it's not like they are getting more common.

Apple I prices are purely speculative, in particular to that group of people who have one room set aside in their house, plastered with Apple posters and their most flag ship products. There might also be a shrine complete with Steve Jobs in effigy in the closet.
We get it. It was Apple's first product and now they are a multi-billion dollar company. So is IBM. You wanna buy a meat slicer off me?
 
Like with many collectors, I'm sure, the Apple I is on my "pipe dream" list (along with the Altair 8800 and Commodore 65, among others), but I have no real intention of paying several thousand bucks for any of them. Granted, what we're looking at here are example of market prices, of sorts: these things show up for sale once in a blue moon, and there are people willing to pay a lot of money for them, so there's at least some validity to the whole thing. Good ol' supply-and-demand.

However, rarity does not always equal value. To me, the prime example of this is the Mattel Aquarius. It was on the market for all of four months, and less than 10,000 of them were sold. However, eBay prices on them seem to be well below $100 in most cases. I picked up mine, along with its original box, at a swap meet for all of $20. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are some fairly common things which go for far more than their common-ness would suggest. Take, for example, the original Apple II. Apple sold thousands (if not millions) of them, yet early examples go for tens of thousands of dollars. Markets don't always act as we expect them to.
-Adam
 
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It's always the question of supply vs. demand: A very common machine with high demand will not be too much different in price than a rare machine with a very low demand. It's the very rare machines in high demand that catches the big bucks.

Rarity can in itself create demand, but only if advertised properly. Nostalgia or a company's curent status is more often the major driving factor in terms of demand.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Just like Beanie Babies. In the vintage computer world, rarity does not always imply value. I've got a few very rare working small computers with documentation that would probably not fetch more than $500 on eBay.

The perceived value of an Apple 1 bears on (1) the hero-worship of Steve Jobs and (2) Apple fanboys in general. As an early 1970s computer, it's not really that fantastically unusual.
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Hobby collectors like us need to understand the type of "collector" who buys a five-figure (or six-figure) Apple 1 is an entirely different creature. To paraphrase the Chevy Chase / Dan Akroyd movie -- "They're collectors, but not like us."

Tech-wise, the Apple 1 is unusual: name another hobby-priced machine from 1976 that supported a full keyboard and RCA video output.

I'll wait. ;)

Everything else in 1976 (not "early" 1970s) was either hex input / LED output, or a front-panel machine, or cost many thousands of dollars.

That's what made the Apple 1 unique -- the packaging vs. the price point.
 
To put the year 1976 in perspective, CP/M 1.3 was released that year, already running on an 8" floppy drive, but requiring a large chassis, heavy duty power supply and half a dozen S100 cards, definitely not at a hobbyist price :)
 
EvanK said:
Tech-wise, the Apple 1 is unusual: name another hobby-priced machine from 1976 that supported a full keyboard and RCA video output.
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It supported a keyboard and video, but the keyboard and display were not included. So, in a sense, not much different from early S100 systems, say a SOL-20 from the same time--except that the SOL-20 included a keyboard--and was released in 1976. Much more professional-looking than the Apple I.

So who's paying $30K for a SOL-20?
 
Chuck(G) said:
It supported a keyboard and video, but the keyboard and display were not included. So, in a sense, not much different from early S100 systems, say a SOL-20 from the same time--except that the SOL-20 included a keyboard--and was released in 1976. Much more professional-looking than the Apple I.

So who's paying $30K for a SOL-20?
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I was thinking the Sol wasn't available until '77. If I am mistaken, then yes they were quite similar in the total package.

Regardless, the Apple 1 prices are solely because of that company's ultimate place in history, not because of the technology.
 
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