Steve Job's Apple-1, from the collection of Microsoft's co-founder, sets an auction record selling for US$945,000

The idea of Apple setting a new record with the help of arch-rival Microsoft sounds bizarre, but it has come true, to a degree. An Apple-1 PC from the office of Steve Jobs has just been sold at auction by Christie's on 10 September at their Pushing Boundaries: Ingenuity from the Paul G. Allen Collection sale in New York. It set a record for the most expensive Apple-1 ever sold at auction, at US$945,000 after fees, but most curious of all is that it came from the collection of Microsft co-founder Paul Allen.

This Apple-I computer from the office of Steve Jobs presents an important historical link to Apple’s early and chaotic history. For nine years it sat in Jobs' office, the missing technological link between Apple-1 and Apple II, until it was taken from Jobs' office along with a pound of Starbucks coffee. The fact it ended up in the hands of Microsoft’s co-founder only adds to the lore surrounding this machine.

The rest of the auction performed strongly, with all 36 lots sold for a total of around US$10.2 million. Many of the lots originated from the late Allen’s closed Living Computers: Museum + Labs in Seattle, which closed earlier in 2020. 


Collection owner Paul Allen (left) standing with Steve Wozniak (right), the co-founder of Apple and creator of the Apple-1 computer

Lot 10⏐Apple Inc.⏐An Apple-1 Personal Computer (Auction record for an Apple-I computer)
Circa 1976 Palo Alto, California
8.9 x 38.1 x 45.7 cm
Provenance:

  • The company Apple demo unit
  • Removed from Steve Job’s office in 1985 by Don Hutmacher, thence by descent
  • Acquired from the above by the late owner 

Estimate: US$500,000 - 800,000
Hammer Price: US$750,000
Sold: US$945,000


While various Apple-Is have been sold before, this lot was in the personal office of Steve Jobs himself. It triggered a bidding war that drove the price of this lot well past its low estimate. Eventually, after a brief but intense session of 13 bids, the lot was won by an in-room bidder, with paddle number "3023." Fetching US$945,000 with fees, it is the most expensive Apple-I ever sold.

As stated previously, this lot was in the office of Steve Jobs himself, but how did it end up there, and how did it find itself in the collection of Microsoft’s co-founder, an archrival of Apple? It is part of a long story that involves Apple’s early and chaotic days, including the resignation of Steve Jobs in 1985. 

The Apple-I began as a small project by Steve Wozniak, leading to 200 units being built. Its motherboard came fully assembled, a breakthrough for consumer computing. Of the 200 built, 175 were sold within 10 months of release, with this lot saved by Apple. The lot had originally been with Apple’s demo unit and featured various upgrades that would appear on the Apple II, as its purpose was to show potential investors the next generation of Apple computing. 


The motherboard of the Apple-1 and its fully assembled nature on delivery made it easy to use for consumers not technically versed nor capable of vast amounts of expensive hardware

The keyboard of the Apple-1 lot. The original only came with the motherboard and other peripherals such as the keyboard were not included
 

This computer stayed at Jobs’ office between 1976 and 1985. During this time, Jobs and his partner Wozniak split their responsibilities, with Wozniak handling product development, and Jobs running the business side. Jobs, however, was power-hungry, seizing control over Wozniak’s Macintosh development department, when Wozniak was injured in a plane crash in 1981, a sign of things to come. In 1983, John Sculley came from PepsiCo to be Apple’s CEO, with Jobs and Sculley immediately clashing, but Sculley couldn't pull rank over Jobs, who ran the Macintosh division as his untouchable fiefdom within Apple.

The hostility between Sculley and Jobs came to a head over the issue of competing with IBM. Sculley preferred to target small and niche markets that were safer from IBM. Jobs instead wanted to directly go after IBM’s monopoly over business computing, offering the Macintosh as an alternative to IBM. Thus, while the Apple II accounted for 85% of sales, it received little attention compared to Jobs' Macintosh division. This caused a max-exodus of staff including Wozniak.

Jobs’ misguided business venture came back to haunt him as it became clear that the Macintosh had no hope of beating the IBM PC. Jobs lost his power at the company he founded and resigned, this was also amid allegations of him creating a toxic work environment, abuse, and womanizing. This is when the computer, and pound of coffee, were taken from Jobs' office by Apple engineer Donald Hutmacher. 

An anecdote about the event reads, “This computer was in Steve Jobs' office before he gave notice and was walked out of Apple in 1985... Engineers were told they could go into Steve’s office and take what they wanted. When Don got to Steve’s office it was almost empty. He noticed this computer and a pound of Starbucks coffee. He left Steve’s old office with the computer and coffee. He has had it in his possession ever since.”

That employee, Don Hutmacher, whose employee access badge is also included in the lot, held onto the Apple-I over the years. He was a quality control engineer at Apple and passed it through his family. It ended up in the hands of Paul Allen’s collection in 2017 at the very latest, as that year it was made part of Allen’s Living Computers: Museum + Labs in Seattle.


Steve Wozniak (left) and Steve Jobs (right) during Apple's early days here with possibly an Apple-I PC

Don Hutmacher's employee badge also included in the sale of the lot



Lot 32⏐Cray Research Inc.⏐Cray-1 Supercomputer (Auction record for a computer)
Circa 1976-1978 Minneapolis
190.5 x 287 cm 
Provenance:

  • Cray Research Center, Mendota Heights
  • University of Minnesota, 1981 (designed to match UMN colors)

Estimate: US$150,000 - 250,000
Hammer Price: US$810,000
Sold: US$1,020,600


When the Cray-1 was brought to market in 1975, it triggered a bidding war between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, two vital groups building America’s nuclear arsenal. Nearly 50 years later, this Cray-1 sparked another bidding war where primarily two phone bidders drove up the price of this lot from its meager low estimate by over five times to its hammer price of US$810,000. It also set the record for the most expensive computer ever sold at auction, at around US$1.02 million with fees. 

Cray Research Inc. was founded in 1972 in the Midwest by industry veteran Seymour Cray. Their first product, the Cray-1 Supercomputer generated intense excitement in the industry. This was due to it being capable of 160 million floating-point operations per second (FLOPS), making it the fastest computer at the time. The demand for the very first machine was so incredibly high that it triggered the aforementioned bidding war, which itself was for only a 6-month trial to use the computer, a testament to its unrivaled capability. 

The company had only estimated that twelve or so of these machines would sell, and as such attached a hefty price tag of over US$8 million per machine and its discs combined. In reality, eighty would be sold, making Cray-Research a major name in the computing business up until the supercomputer market crash in the 1990s.


Seymour Cray with the Cray-1 supercomputer. Cray began working in the computing industry in 1950 and was there for its earliest breakthroughs

The internals of the Cray-1. Underneath its slick and aesthetically pleasing externals is a revolutionary design that slashed processing time


The Cray-1 is identifiable by its C-shape, a clear departure from the boxy-shaped supercomputers of the past, a triumph from both form and function. This is because not only was the machine an aesthetic improvement, but it also required less wiring, making it faster and cutting down on processing time.

It also helped that when the Cray-1 was unveiled to the public, its 80 MHz processor made it the fastest computing machine on the market at the time, beating its rivals and predecessors by a wide margin.

As the years progressed, Cray-1s would be decommissioned by their owners, with this specific model being used by Cray Research as a marketing sample. Only 17 machines are thought to still exist worldwide, with this being the first ever auctioned off. Clearly, after all these years, the Cray-1 still inspires awe and high prices on the market.



Lot 14⏐Heimsoeth & Rinke⏐A Four-Rotor Enigma Cipher Machine
Circa November 1941 
16.5 x 28.6 x 34.8 cm
Provenance:

  • Anonymous sale, Bonhams, New York, 7 December 2016, lot 1088
  • Acquired at the above sale by the late owner

Estimate: US$250,000-350,000
Hammer Price: US$570,000
Sold: US$718,200


In one of the most intense bidding sessions of the auction, after at least 13 rapid bids, the buyer with paddle number "1724" won the prized M4 Enigma machine that would have been in the service with the Kriegsmarine, or German Navy, during the Second World War for encrypting communications. It went for the hammer price of US$570,000 and after fees, the price totaled at US$718,200. 

Contrary to popular belief, the Enigma found its origins at the end of the First World War. It used a series of motors to scramble regular text being typed out and could only be decrypted using a series of secret keys and settings to understand the message. The Germans would first adopt the Enigma variant named Funkschlüssel C in 1926. The variant that was just sold by Christie's is the M4 which was adopted in 1942 exclusively by the navy. 

What made the M4 variant special was its usage of a fourth rotor, which made decryption more difficult as it created further variables that had to be adjusted for. Regardless, by this point, the British code breeders at Bletchley Park, made famous by the 2014 movie The Imitation Game, were aware of the 4-rotor development and had already come up with various solutions to the issue it presented.

Eventually, the Bombe computer developed by Alan Turing was able to crack the encryption of the Enigma, and soon the machine had lost all effectiveness. The vaunted M4 that was the backbone of the German U-boat fleet’s communications system was compromised, with the Allies being well aware of German movements throughout the rest of the war.


A close-up of the rotary and light-up switches necessary to encrypt and decode information on the enigma

The Wehrmacht (German Army) also employed the Enigma to encode their communications. Here General Heinz Guderian overlooks a crew operating a three-rotor Wehrmacht Enigma I during the Battle of France (1940), one soldier operates the machine while another writes down the results

Benedict Cumberbatch, playing Alan Turing, inspecting the Bombe machine that would defeat the Enigma's cipher in the movie The Imitation Game (2014)


Other Highlighted Lots:


Lot 11⏐Antony Gormley (b.1950)⏐Quantum Cloud XI, stainless steel
Executed in 2000
226 x 142 x 116 cm
Provenance:

  • Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris
  • Private collection, 2000
  • Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 1 July 2008, lot 71
  • Collection of Paul G. Allen 

Estimate: US$250,000-350,000
Hammer Price: US$460,000
Sold: US$579,600


Lot 12⏐R.M.S. Titanic⏐First Class Luncheon Menu
14 April 1912
Provenance:

  • Abraham Lincoln Salomon, businessman and Titanic first-class passenger, 1868-1959 (by report)
  • Isaac Gerald Frauenthal, lawyer and Titanic first-class passenger, 1868-1932 (inscription to verso: “I. G. Frauenthal / 1493 B[road]way”)
  • By descent to an anonymous owner; Lion Heart Autographs, Titanic Auction, 30 September 2015, lot 103
  • Acquired at the above sale by the late owner

Estimate: US$30,000-50,000
Hammer Price: US$270,000
Sold: US$340,200


Lot 4⏐Portolan Chart of the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, and the Northwest Atlantic Ocean
Probably Civitavecchia or Naples, last quarter of the 16th century
Provenance:

  • Anonymous sale; Christie’s, 24 May 1995, lot 80
  • The Map House
  • Acquired from the above by the late owner

Estimate: US$70,000-100,000
Hammer Price: US$240,000
Sold: US$302,400


Lot 9⏐Steve Jobs (1955-2011)⏐“Enclosed is your first Apple Computer...”, Two typed letters 
5 November 1976
Provenance:

  • Ed [Faber, the founding president of Computerland Inc., November 1976]
  • Luke Snyder, Farnsworth Computer Center, Aurora, Illinois
  • Acquired from the above by a private collector, 1991
  • Acquired by the late owner, 2005 

Estimate: US$50,000-80,000
Hammer Price: US$240,000
Sold: US$302,400


Auction Details:

Auction House: Christie’s New York
Sale: Pushing Boundaries: Ingenuity from the Paul G. Allen Collection
Date: 10 September 2024
Number of Lots: 36
Sold: 100%
Sale total: US$10,253,500