Job’s Apple-1 goes under the hammer in New York

IT was one of the earliest computers Steve Jobs sold out of his Palo Alto garage and it went on sale overnight fetching a pretty handsome price tag.

Apple Computers Inc. CEO Steve Jobs holds up the new iPod Nano in San Francisco, Sept. 07, 2005. The Apple iPod Nano is 1/5 the size of the original iPod and weighs 42 grams. (AP PicPaul/Sakuma) mobile phone phones technology

A 1976 Apple computer sold by Steve Jobs from his parents’ garage fetched $442,000 at auction in New York, falling short of its pre-sale estimate in a competitive computer relic market.

The company responsible for the auction, Christie, says the Apple-1 is the only surviving such computer documented to have been sold directly by the late Apple founder to a customer from the garage in Los Altos, California.

A spokeswoman said it sold for $442,000 but was unable to give any immediate details about the identity of the buyer.

Christie’s had previously valued the computer at $485,000 to $725,000, highest pre-sale estimate for an Apple-1 at auction.

The Apple-1, the first pre-assembled personal computer ever sold, is considered a vanguard of the personal computer revolution.

Prices have been on the rise for relics of computing history, which have been snapped up by institutions.

In October, an Apple-1 built by Jobs’s business partner Steve Wozniak sold for a staggering $1.1 million at a Bonhams auction in New York, bought by the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

In 2013, Christie’s sold another 1976 Apple-1 for $469,650 and in 2010 another for $257,100 in London.