One of the rarest computers in Apple’s history went under the hammer at a Bonhams auction in New York. At the end of the auction on October 14, two bidders remained and continued bidding until the price reached $1.15 million — a record for a production Apple-1, reports UNN, citing Bild.
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According to the media outlet, the computer, named Hatfield, was released in 1976 — the year Apple was founded. It has remained operational, and the signature of the company’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak, is on its circuit board.
Along with the device, the buyer received a letter from Steve Jobs written in January 1978. At the time, Jobs offered the computer’s original owner, Fred Hatfield, an exchange for the circuit board of the latest Apple II model with 4 kilobytes of memory. Hatfield refused and preserved the historic specimen.
The Apple-1 was the company’s first product. The computer was sold as an assembled circuit board to which the user connected a keyboard and monitor. According to the Apple-1 registry, the existence of 94 units of this model has been confirmed. The Bonhams auction house believes that fewer than 75 computers have survived, with even fewer still operational. Before the auction, the Hatfield was valued at $500,000–800,000, but the final amount significantly exceeded the upper end of the estimate.