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Sotheby’s is preparing a blockbuster History of Science & Technology sale packed with amazing artifacts and collectors’ items. While there are many items that could justify being singled out, the famous auction house has chosen to spotlight a working sample of the Apple-1 computer serial number 01-0033 (1976) on its YouTube channel. Remember this first 50 hand-built-by-Wozniak batch has a place in history as the first commercial Apple computers ever sold.
One of 50: The First Computer Apple Ever Sold | Sotheby's - YouTube
In the video above you can see Harry Sadler, the original and current owner of the Apple-1 computer up for auction, preparing, booting and demonstrating this ancient ‘pre-built.’ Sadler underlines that his rare example was bought from the Byte Shop in 1976. While he ended up working in IT, Sadler said that it was mainly a hobbyist machine, for experimenting, tinkering with BASIC, and so on.
Interesting, Sadler took his Apple-1 back to the Byte Shop after a couple of weeks to get a minor repair done. There he met Steve Jobs and inquired about vacancies at Apple Computer. Nothing came of that because of admitted inexperience, but in 2010 Steve Jobs visited and bought the Siri Inc. startup, where Sadler was the 10th employee. So, Sadler did actually end up working for Apple.
The estimate for this machine is $300,000 - $500,000. It comes with original accessories like a cassette deck and keyboard, vintage monitor. There’s also an original Apple-1 Operation Manual, In-house copy of Apple Basic Manual, Apple-1 Cassette Interface Manual, Microchess manual, and various software on cassettes
I think this is rather high, as one of the rare wooden case models known as the ‘Moore Apple-1’ only achieved $475,000 (w/BP) for its client last year.
Other notable computers in the sale
This Sotheby’s sale has quite a few other notable computers among the tech artifacts listed. For example, there’s the Steve Jobs stage-used NeXT Computer from the ‘NeXT Introduction’ in 1988, and a similar model for European demos. Then there’s a Mark-8 minicomputer from 1974, a MITS Altair 8800 computer from 1974, as well as some complete sealed vintage Mac systems from early on in Apple’s history.
On the more scientific side of things, there’s lots of interesting artifacts associated with, owned, or used by iconic individuals like Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Richard Feynman, and even Albert Einstein.
The History of Science & Technology takes place on July 15, starting at 14:00 EDT live in Sotheby’s saleroom at 945 Madison Avenue in New York.
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