"Celebration" Apple 1 auction finished – $815,000

"Celebration" Apple I

It appears that the much followed “Celebration” Apple I computer has finally been sold for a cool $815,000 US dollars. I guess it didn’t hit their stated value of $1M, but it’s still a heck of a lot of dough. I actually watched the bids hit $1.2M, but apparently there was a bid pulled at the last minute.

I’d now like to take a moment to reflect on exactly how much money just changed hands over a 40-year-old computer:

  • With it’s 8k configuration, the buyer paid almost $100 per byte of RAM. (And you thought RAM cost a lot in the ’70s…)
  • The 1MHz 6502 averaged about 250k instructions per second, or $3.26 per IPS.
  • $20,375 per column of text
  • $17.68 per TV pixel (NTSC)
  • Corrected for inflation, this sale was 250 times the system’s original selling price.
  • The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Arizona just made at least $8,150 (minimum 10% charity donation).

As far as I can tell, the record is $905,000 paid when the Henry Ford museum purchased one in 2014.

Author: Josh

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