Raise your hand to find out how many ‘Quién da más’ or ‘Empeños a lo beast’ fans are in the room. These programs give off the strange feeling that at any moment we could stumble upon a relic of ancient computing.
And that, perhaps, we would escape if we were not attentive to a material which today would be worth millions. Although its place is more of a museum showcase. Such was the fate a few years ago of a Apple I, one of those teams that will never lose its historical value.
The day someone had an apple that I threw away
And it is that this story
The store, Clean Bay Area, came across an Apple I, one of 200 models built by Apple’s founding Triple Deal: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne. Also, the computer was in a crushing and pristine state.
Even the authors of this computer treasure did not know what they would pay for one of them: early models hit store shelves for $666.66 —Wozniak liked the joke of seeing so many repeated numbers — less than $3,000 today and priced 35-40% less than other personal computers of the same era.
Historically, in 2009 an individual paid nearly 20,000 dollars for housing. Only a year later, the figure has increased by a zero behind
And another Apple-1 ‘Byte Shop’, numbered “01-00002by Steve Jobs himself – although the model was #78, according to the company’s internal filing – it was auctioned on December 15, 2022. Finally, the winning bid paid $442,118 for this little relic of programming.
In fact, the store managers didn’t know exactly what they were doing either. So one of the workers called Víctor Gichun, vice president of the company and owner of the premises, to find out how to evaluate him. And of course, Gichun couldn’t believe it. A priori he thought that the material was fake, a “repro”, very common thing during the last years
Unfortunately, the Santa Clara woman never provided more information, phone numbers or references. This lady showed up with the three boxes in a van, unloaded them, recommended throwing them away and drove off with them. So Clean Bay Area staff were unable to distribute profits and pocketed a small fortune. “If I come across his car and recognize it, I’ll give him a check for $100,000.” I would say the person in charge of the store. The value of things, as we already know, is given by the person.
