The Most Collectible PCs of All Time

When Steve Jobs has a computer to sell these days, the world listens. Back in 1976, almost nobody did. Jobs and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak struggled to drum up interest in the Apple 1, which they planned to sell as a bare circuit board that hobbyists would turn into a working computer by soldering in chips themselves. Then Paul Terrell, who ran the Byte Shop in Mountain View, California--one of the first computer stores--placed an order for 50 Apple I systems, contingent on Apple's supplying them as fully assembled boards. "Steve was hungry for an order and knew he could get Woz and some of their buddies to put this order together in their garage. And I knew where they lived--so we did the deal and that got Apple Computer started," Terrell remembers. (He had to hire a local carpenter to provide the computers' wooden cases.) The 1 was only a modest success back in the day. In today's Apple-crazy world, though, it may be the most famous collectible PC. One reportedly sold for $50,000 in 1999, but you can probably get one for about half that-if you can find it at all. (Photo courtesy of the Obsolete Technology Website.)