An Apple 1 from 1976,
one of the first Apple computers ever built, goes on the auction block at Christie's next week. With bids starting $300,000, a pre-sale estimate says the device could fech up to $500,000.
Apple 1 may look like an old computer motherboard with wires sticking out, but it was designed and sold by
college dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Apple Inc.
The 11-by-14 green piece of plastic covered with a grid of memory chips above a labyrinth of wires was one of the first 25 such computer elements, and sold for $666.66.
Various estimates put the number of Apple 1 units made at 200, most of which have disappeared or been discarded. Some put the number known to still exist from about 30 to 50.
The device, which could be worth more than half a million dollars in the auction, came with eight kilobytes of memory - a million times less than the average computer today.
Vintage Apple products have become an especially hot item since
Jobs' death in October 2011, surrounding the mystique attached to this entrepreneur who joined forces with Wozniak to build computer prototypes in a California garage.
Another Apple 1 1976 model was sold last month
for a record $671,400 by a German auction house, breaking a previous record of $640,000 set in November. Sotheby's sold one last year for $374,500.
The latest auction at Christie's, "First Bytes: Iconic Technology from the Twentieth Century", is being conducted online only from June 24 to July 9.
The Apple 1 is to be displayed starting Monday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, south of San Francisco.
With inputs from Associated Press
An undated photo provided by Christie's Auction House shows an 'Apple 1' prototype computer, built in 1976, accompanied by an operation manual and schematic as well as a photo of its inventors, Steve Wozniak (left) and Steve Jobs. PHOTO: AP 
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