6-Figure Price Tag Expected For Rare Apple-1 Computer At Auction

"Before Apple was a trillion-dollar company, before its phones and laptops came to dominate the tech industry, it was just a California startup working out of a garage. Now, one of the first products the company ever made — the Apple-1 computer — is about to be the star of a live auction on Sept. 25 in Boston."

"'The Apple-1 is so iconic of that era, of the garage era of Silicon Valley, that I think there is almost no other object that really encapsulates what it does culturally and technologically,' says Dag Spicer, senior curator for the Computer History Museum, which has an Apple-1 in its collection. Spicer says it's one of their most popular pieces."

"Looking at an Apple-1 is kind of like looking at the Rosetta Stone. You don't totally understand what you're seeing, but you sense its significance."

"'The Apple-1 didn't come with a keyboard, didn't come with a monitor or anything like that,' says Corey Cohen, an expert who restores Apple-1 computers. 'It really was just the board, but the board itself was really the first you could only 'buy assembled' computer.'"