Ultra-Rare Apple-1 In Wooden Byte Shop Case Valued At $300K Is Up For Auction
Collectors with deep pockets have yet another opportunity to own a piece of Apple history, this time with an extremely rare Apple-1 computer housed in a wooden Byte Shop case. The nearly 50-year-old system is still fully functional and is expected to fetch at least $300,000 at auction. At the time of this writing, the high bid sits at $144,311. To put it into context, we saw an original Apple-1 prototype sell for $677,196 at auction a few years ago. The record sits at $905,000, which was set back in 2014.
According to RR Auctions where this piece of tech nostalgia resides, only nine Apple-1 systems sporting an original wooden Byte Shop case are believed to still be in existence. Of those, this is the first one that the auction house has listed for sale. Adding to its appeal as a collector's item, the original owner was June Blodgett Moore, the first female graduate of Standford Law School.
"The board retains its white ceramic MOS 6502 processor, all three original Sprague 'Big Blue' capacitors, and is wired to support executing Apple BASIC on an 8K memory system. The 'breadboard' prototyping area is untouched and the green coat exhibits some minor scuffs but minimal peeling, unlike many Apple-1 boards. Four of the power supply diodes are period-correct replacements, and all power regulators are date-correct and original," the listing states.
RR Auctions says Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen examined and restored the unit to an operational state earlier this summer. While there are some minor scuffs and a hairline crack across the bend of the case top, he rates the overall condition at 8.0 out of 10.
The two Steves—Jobs and Wozniak (or Woz), whose signatures on a check fetched nearly $164,000 at auction in 2022—built the Apple-1 as a bare circuit board to be sold as a kit, with the idea that hobbyists could put it together themselves. When they approached Paul Terrell, owner of The Byte Shop in Mountain View, California, the store owner agreed to buy 50 of the units, but only if they came pre-built. Hence the wooden case that you see above.
For its time, the Apple-1 was an impressive achievement. It featured 4K of DRAM that could be expanded to 8K on-board or 64K externally, as well as a MOS Technology 6502 processor clocked at just over 1MHz (yes, megahertz folks!). It also boasted a built-in video terminal so that it could be hooked up to a monitor or TV screen.
The winner bidder will receive the following...
- original Apple-1 board, marked on the reverse with "01-0020"
- original Apple Cassette Interface (ACI) board
- original Byte Shop wooden case with built-in Datanetics keyboard and Triad power supply
- period-correct video monitor and associated cables
- period-correct copies of software on cassette tapes, with contemporary handwritten notes and instructions
- modern copy of the Apple-1 Operation Manual
Anyone interested can head to the RR Auction page to register and place a bid. The auction ends this Saturday, September 20, 2025.
Images courtesy of RR Auction
Images courtesy of RR Auction
