Historic PC sold by Steve Jobs goes under hammer

05 November 2014 - 10:00 By Reuters
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TIME MACHINE: This Apple PC dates backs to the 1970s
TIME MACHINE: This Apple PC dates backs to the 1970s
Image: REUTERS

A fully operational Apple computer that company co-founder Steve Jobs sold out of his parents' garage in 1976 for $600 will hit the auction block next month, where it is expected to fetch more than $500000, Christie's said.

The Ricketts Apple-1 Personal Computer, named after its original owner Charles Ricketts and being sold on December 11, is the only known surviving Apple-1 documented as having been sold directly by Jobs, then just 21, to an individual from the Los Altos, California family home, Christie's said.

"It all started with the Apple-1 and with this particular machine," said Andrew McVinish, Christie's director of decorative arts.

"To be able to own a machine that started the digital revolution is a very powerful attraction."

It is being sold by Robert Luther, a Virginia collector who bought it in 2004 at a police auction of storage locker goods without knowing all the details of its history.

"I knew it had been sold from the garage of Steve Jobs in July of 1976 because I had the buyer's cancelled cheque," Luther wrote on a kickstarter page soliciting funding for a book on the machine's history.

"My computer had been purchased directly from Jobs, and based on the buyer's address on the cheque, he lived 6km from Jobs."

In 1999, the Ricketts Apple-1 was acquired by Bruce Waldack, an entrepreneur who had just sold his company, DigitalNation.

Waldack eventually lost his fortune, left the country and died in 2007.

It was auctioned at a self-storage facility in Virginia, where Luther purchased it.

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