One of the few still-functioning Apple 1 computers in existence was sold at auction Friday for a record $374,500. The winning bid was more than twice the expected sale price of $120,000-$180,000 as listed by auctioneer Sotheby’s.
The bidding for the 6502 microprocessor powered Apple 1 computer, which boasted 8k bytes of RAM, came down to two unidentified parties in the end, one an absentee collector whose bids were being handled by Sotheby's, the other via telephone.
The telephone bidder eventually won out, staking claim to one of only 200 Apple 1 computers ever created (all of which were hand-built by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak), of which 50 are believed to still be in existence and only a handful of those still functioning.
Also up for auction in the same lot was a 4 page report and handwritten note penned by Steve Jobs, which included diagrams and thoughts on how to improve Atari's World Cup Football arcade game, a position he had been hired for as a 19-year-old straight out of Reed College.
The typed report includes pages embossed with Atari letterhead, with the last page of the report being stamped with Jobs' home address at the time, and the Buddhist mantra "gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svahdl", which translates to "Going, going, going on beyond, always going on beyond, always becoming Buddha."
The handwritten note is addressed to Stephen (Jobs' supervisor at the time, Stephen Bristow), and adds additional details that Jobs forgot to include in the 4-page report. He ends the handwritten note with 'If any questions see me. Thanks. Steve Jobs.'
The report and note also fetched a heftier price than originally expected, selling for $27,500, well above the list price of $10,000-$15,000, and was contested among 3 main bidders.
Both lots show the continued demand for Apple memorabilia, and specifically memorabilia related to Steve Jobs following his death last year. In December 2011, Apple's founding papers sold for nearly $1.6 million dollars, while Steve Jobs' autobiography was one of the best-selling books of 2011.
