The story is this: one of Apple’s most important figures from the 80s is selling a lot of old hardware. The material ends up in a warehouse and changes hands. As usual, he decides to sell them to do some cleaning and some money. They put them in a container and let it do what God wants. But just before passing through China to then be destroyed and recycledthe latest owner considers the move: “hey, this might have additional value.”
And so much. One of the devices, the crown jewel, an Apple Lisa impeccable and perfectly operational, was one of those unique successes: the auction ended for $65,000. $65,000 that was going to end up being turned into a block of electronic waste for later storage.
I found the needle in the haystack
“Our consignor recognized that they were too valuable and historic to destroy, so he purchased them from the scrapyard.” These are statements from Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of RR Auction, the auditor responsible for the auction. Nothing bogus. And apparently, This set of hardware previously belonged to Delbert Yocam.
Del was one of the pioneers of the company. He worked as an executive for Apple in the 1980s and was actually the manager who led the Apple II team. He would later become the brand’s first chief operating officer (COO), focused on the Eastern and Latin American markets. In 1989, after ten years at the helm of the company, he left the company to seek his fortune in another historic company, Tektronix.
But as was the case with that original iPhone that sold for $63,000, the one you keep, you find. The saying already confirms this. According to reports, among the items found there are also other pieces of equipment from the era which will be auctioned in another lot. But Unfortunately, not everything could be saved.. Several disk drives, monitors and keyboards have already been destroyed. Of course, nothing like Lisa packaged and like new:
Ownership of RR Auction
This Lisa is in excellent cosmetic condition with no noticeable scratches or stains on the case, retaining its original cream gray color. Unlike most examples, it has not yellowed. Given the historic nature of the computer, RR Auction has not restored it to a fully operational condition; A detailed condition report written by Tim Colegrove of The BYTE Shop (Boston, MA) describes the basic maintenance required to make it fully operational. The processor, analog board, CRT, keyboard, mouse, and a RAM card all worked well during testing. Any Apple Lisa 1 with its original “Twiggy” units is extremely desirable; To have such an attractive example, linked to the symbolic power of the history of Apple Computer, is something truly extraordinary.
The first Apple Lisa was a commercial failure: 10,000 units before it was discontinued. Too expensive, too ostentatious. But it was the germinal idea for what would come later, the PowerMacs and iMacs which integrated a screen, a keyboard and mouse, a disk drive and a processing tower, within the same device. The Lisa 2, in fact, was nothing more than the first Macintosh. And the Macintosh XL, before it was called that, was called Lisa 2/10.
Lisa represented all the ideas of the “Apple brand”: harmony of forms, functionality and operability, simplification and power. For years, Steve Jobs maintained that Apple Lisa was the acronym “Local Integrated Systems Architecture”. Years would pass until Jobs’ official biographer, Walter Isaacson, confirmed the obvious: this historic piece of computer science made a clear allusion to his eldest daughter, the girl with whom he had a complicated relationship, to say the least. . The girl who inspired, courtesy of the iPhone, his greatest contribution to humanity.
Cover image | Evan Demicoli
An older version of this article was originally published on 03/16/2023.
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