Along with all the big happenings around Apple, such as the WWDC 2012 coming to a conclusion; there’s yet another news related to Apple that has just hit the stands. Sotheby, an auction house, has just auctioned an Apple I (the motherboard, cassette interface, and its BASIC programming manual) for a total of $374,500. A hand-written note by Steve Jobs was also put on auction and fetched $27,500. The note was written by Jobs when he was at Atari.

Though the expected prices for each item were approximated to be around $180k and $13k respectively, the pieces brought in more than double the amount. There was a fight between an absentee bidder and an anonymous phone bidder over the Apple I; eventually the phone bidder won the battle. According to Sotheby, the Apple I which was just sold is one among fifty existing Apple Is, with only six of those fifty known to still work. Apple had produced around 200 pieces of Apple I.

Quote from the auction catalog advertising Apple I:

“The Apple Computer. A truly complete microcomputer system on a single PC board.” When Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs presented the Apple I Computer to the Homebrew Computer Club in 1976, it was dismissed by everyone but Paul Terrell, the owner of a chain of stores called Byte Shop. Terrell ordered 50 computers for $500 apiece, insisting that the circuit boards come fully assembled rather than as DIY kits similar to the Altair, and Jobs and Woz managed to produce the requisite computers in 30 days. They continued production, immediately creating 50 additional Apple I’s to sell to friends and an additional 100 to sell through vendors, at a retail price of $666.66, a number that garnered complaints among conservative Christians, but provided a lucrative 33% markup.”

The new MacBook Pro looks pretty cheap now, doesn’t it? ;)

[via Apple Insider]