A lot of people joke about the 'Apple-tax' , but even the most diehard fanboys might think twice about spending £150,000 on one of the company's desktops of gadgets. But this isn't the latest jewel-encrusted iPad - instead it's one of the company's earliest computers, originally sold in 1976 and being auctioned later this month.
It's thought that about 200 of the 'Apple-1' computers were built by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, and were among the first to be sold as pre-built computers that worked essentially straight out of the box. The systems shipped with a 1MHz MOS 6502 CPU, 4K RAM and the ability to power a monochrome display with a resolution of up to 280x192. Of course, you had to supply your own display and keyboard, and storage was taken care of by an optional tape drive.
At the time, the computer was sold for $666.66 (£520), or around $2,600 (£2020) in today's money. When it goes under the hammer at Christie's in London it will be the first example to be sold by a major auction house and is expected to fetch somewhere in the region of £150,000.
The reason for the relatively high price - other than the expanded 8K memory and included cassette interface - is that the system is in excellent condition, complete with the original packaging and manuals. There's even a typed letter signed by Steve Jobs answering several of the owner's questions.
The system is an exceptionally rare piece of computing history - especially given the condition - and is expected to be purchased by either a collector or a museum. Of the several hundred Apple-1's that were built, only around 50 are thought to have survived.
