Apple Computer Built by Jobs and Wozniak Up for Auction

An original Apple I computer-created 45 years ago by Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak will go up for sale at auction house John Moran in southern California on Tuesday.

Experts expect the device to fetch at least $500,000, according to the Los Angeles Times, as it is “the holy grail” for collectors of antique computers and electronics.

Jobs and Wozniak made about 200 Apple 1 computers in the 1970s. Today, sixty and twenty of them are still working or can be restored. The computer that will be auctioned on Tuesday is one of them.

Most of the computers the two Apple founders made in a garage in the village of Palo Alto were sold as single motherboards, with no screen, keyboard, or computer case. The one up for auction now has it: the device is enclosed in a box made from the rare koa wood (sourced from Hawaii). Unfortunately, only a handful of Apple 1 computers remain in these wooden cases.

A computer store in the San Francisco area had bought 50 copies from the young Apple founders at the time but didn’t know that they would only ship motherboards. So the store then made its own wooden computer cases from the cheap koa wood and then sold the computers.