Christie's Auctions Computer Jobs Sold in 1976 for $365,000

One of the first Apple computers that Steve Jobs sold for a mere $ 666 nearly three decades ago, was auctioned for $375,000 at Christie's in London on Thursday.

According to The Times of India, the computer, an Apple -1 Personal Computer, was sold by Jobs from his parent's garage in 1976 to Charles Ricketts. It is still functional and was auctioned with a check labelled 'Purchased July 1976 from Steve Jobs in his parent's garage in Los Altos'.

The computer is housed in a metal blue box and comes with Datanetics keyboard embedded in wood. Only about a hundred of the computers were produced and fewer than 50 are said to be in existence. Thursday's computer auction was accompanied by cancelled checks signed by Jobs and an operational manual.

"Including an original Apple-1 motherboard, labeled Apple Computer 1 Palo Alto. Ca. Copyright 1976 with four rows A-D, and columns 1-18, white ceramic MOS Technologies 6502 microprocessor, labeled MCS 6502 1576, 8K bytes RAM in 16-pin 4K memory chips, original 3 "Big-Blue" power supply capacitors, 2 power supplies including 3 capacitors, firmware in PROMS...," reads Christie's lot description.

According to ZD Net, the computer was hand built by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and was originally sold without any of the accessories it now comes with. Its auction price at Christie's was lower than the expected price of $ 400,000 to $ 600,000. Another Apple-1 computer was purchased by Henry Ford Foundation in October for more than $ 900,000.

The computer is among the few surviving and working Apple-1 computers in private hands, while others are museums.