
Apple I discarded as junk sells for $200k; mystery woman stands to get half - mmastrac
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28221648/100-000-check-awaits-mystery-apple-i-donor
======
robterrell
A similar thing happened to my uncle Paul (Terrell)... after he moved to
Portland, he had an Apple I (part of the original run of 50 he famously
bought) and many other ancient 8-bit computers, like Exidy Sorcerers, in a
garage my cousin was using. One day my cousin got frustrated by the "junk" and
hauled a bunch of it away to the dump.

I believe my uncle still has one more bare motherboard squirreled away
somewhere -- it used to hang on his wall in a plexiglass case as art.

~~~
allenbrunson
by a weird coincidence, i was just watching a video where steve jobs talks
about that early sale of the 50 computers. it is interesting in its own right.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJKlc4m5D50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJKlc4m5D50)

~~~
robterrell
Have not seen that before, thanks! 1980 was only a few years after.

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smaili
You can't really blame the woman, something so old doesn't shout "Hey I'm
worth hundreds of thousands!" to most people. But I am glad people at the
depot recognized its value and didn't actually recycle it.

~~~
informatimago
You can blame her. I can't count the reports of such cases, where they throw
away valuable things, just because they're not all chrome and shiny.

~~~
untog
What? 99% of electronics from the 80s and 90s are utterly worthless. As far as
the odds go, she was entirely correct to throw the thing out.

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aerovistae
had to reread this title like 10 times. kept reading it as "Apple [that] I
discarded...." and kept trying to find that angle in the article.

finally cracked the mystery, felt epicly stupid.

~~~
developer1
Same, intentional clickbait title. A decent editor would not have allowed that
through. "Discarded Apple I sells for $200k; mystery woman stands to get
half". Not difficult.

~~~
lfowles
That's stretching the idea of clickbait quite a bit. "Mystery woman gets rid
of old computer, you won't believe how much it sold for!" is the one baiting
clicks. Current title is just an unfortunate arrangement of words.

~~~
EarthLaunch
> That's stretching the idea of clickbait quite a bit.

He was probably just using that term mistakenly, what a troll.

~~~
aerovistae
Wait, what? Who are you calling a troll?

~~~
7Z7
Woosh!

It's a joke about misusing terminology.

~~~
aerovistae
So far over my head I didn't even feel the breeze from its passing.

~~~
lfowles
I missed it too... so far over my head I frowned and muttered something about
chemtrails.

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ChuckMcM
I hope they find her, a $100K isn't anything to sneeze at.

I did go to a garage sale in the Bay Area where an older couple there had the
manuals for an Altair 8800 which they kept because they thought they might
have some historical value to someone but threw out the hardware because it
wasn't really useful to anyone. But over the years it is very hard to know
what will and what won't become collectible in the future.

Back before Jobs turned Apple around you would be lucky to get $500 for an old
Apple I, after all who wants the first computer of a failed computer company?
:-)

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peter303
These boards were $666 in 1976, about $4K in today's money. Plus you had
supply a TV, power supply, keyboard, and punch tape reader. That was twice my
income in those days.

~~~
dpe82
Going by CPI it's actually about $2,800 in today's money. Still a significant
amount of cash though.

[http://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=666.00&year1=19...](http://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=666.00&year1=1976&year2=2015)

~~~
kadavy
I'm not fantastic at math, but I think that makes it about an 11.3% annual
rate of return after inflation. That's not outrageous, but I'd take that
investment.

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AHHspiders
How cool. Makes me wonder what might be worth more in today's disposable age.

Maybe ten years from now, old cellphones that had removable batteries will be
in high demand, because a sun flare blew out all the modern ones. _shrug_

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tdicola
Didn't one of the boards sell for almost $1M recently? Did the market for them
drop massively or did some fool over pay by $800k for an Apple I?

~~~
jkestner
[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2837776/vintage-
apple-1...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2837776/vintage-
apple-1-sells-for-a-record-905k.html)

$905,000, and presumably there's a premium for being in working condition. I
think there's also a small market of people who have the money and care to
spend it on this, so prices can fluctuate quite a bit.

~~~
chaostheory
Considering the time for the sales transaction taking place (2 days?), I'm
sure if they took it to an auction house it would fetch a much higher price.
There's only 50 ever made and it's from a household name that even the fashion
houses respect.

On the other side of the story, this story is totally genius marketing (if
intended). I've been hearing this firm's name all day including their policy
of sharing proceeds with people who donate.

~~~
jkestner
You may be right, but if you look at the history of sales recently, the prices
are all over the place. This one's still pretty low in comparison, but if it
isn't working, that could explain the difference. Or perhaps some of these
came with accessories, like a cassette player.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I#Collectors.27_item](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I#Collectors.27_item)

5/13: $668K 6/13: $390K 11/13: $330K 10/14: $905K 12/14: $365K

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bontoJR
I had some very old machines around, even if I am not even 30 yo, I love
almost any kind of old machine I was able to collect.

I had a small collection since a couple of years ago composed by Sun Ultra-60,
Next Workstation (working, but original HD was gone), Next Cube (never
worked), Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Apple Macintosh (not working) and
some others machines people were not interested anymore and I was able to
collect for free. It was a quite good collection and funny to deal with in the
spare time, but then, one day, my father decided to discard all of them
because they were _old and mostly broken_. I was so disappointed it took me a
while to realize it.

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bwldrbst
And that's why I like to eyeball the piles of junk on the side of the road
waiting for collection by the council.

So far the best I've managed is a Commodore 64!

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dmourati
I read that as Apple "I" (as in me) discarded...

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logn
If they really can't find her, they should peruse the obits for her husband.

Edit: 3 downvotes and a bizarre reply to my comment about sexism. From the
article, "He feels badly because the woman said her husband had died a couple
of months earlier". How is my comment sexist? And how would you find the
woman?

~~~
marincounty
I curious about the 50/50 split? It looks like a relatively new
company.(couldn't find a review on Yelp, and 50 plus like on Facebook). I went
to Clean Bay Area, under 'How much money can I make?'; The answer was scarce,
and I would need to email them for details.

Call me cynical, but while I feel this is a true story, I wonder if this is
the first time they actually ponied up any money on donated equipment? That is
without a firm agreement to buy before the drop-off, or pick-up?

This one Apple computer and their earnest attempt to find the woman and give
her $100,000 sounds fishy? It sounds like it could be a PR move?

I could be wrong, and they always make good on their promise to split
proceedes with customers 50/50?

I will probally never know--unless the company comes on here(HN), and
describes the details, and discusses the 50/50 split? It would all be good
marketing for an honest recycling company? Especially, a new one?

My main point, is I have dealt with antiques, collectables, etc.--for 20
years. I have never found a completely honest wholesale/picker/auction
house/reseller/buyer? You have to keep a keen eye on All of them. If you want
to donate to a supposedly good cause--just drop off the stuff. Just keep in
mind even companies like Goodwill are loaded with huge internal theft
problems. My local San Rafael Goodwill has fired at least three managers, that
I know for internal theft. None of the managers were charged? Why? Maybe,
because the nonprofit didn't want the bad publicity? They sure go after,
customers caught stealing--with a vengeance? By the way--I see people buying
too many products from Goodwill close to, or exceeding retail prices?

One manager was literally cherry picking the valuable donations and selling
them out the back door. He was quite the happy entrepreneur--for awhile?
Another was caught taking expensive jewelry out of the company safe, and yes
Goodwill rehired her for some reason! I am not picking on Goodwill. I am
actually hesitant to say anything because they have a lot of lawyers. Someone
wrote a book on Goodwill, and no one bother to read it.

Just expect to get ripped off if you are not selling your stuff yourself.
Hell, even the wealthy need to beware--I believe Christie's was found guilty
of price fixing a few years ago? Oh yea, go through your stuff before tossing?
I've seen a lot of people throwing away 1st edition books. I can go into most
people homes and find something of value--they thought was junk.

~~~
bitJericho
Some people have empathy and integrity.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/mystery-woman-
dumps-2...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/mystery-woman-
dumps-200k-apple-1-computer-at-recycling-depot/), which points to this.

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shaneofalltrad
Turns out that website crashed all my tabs in Chrome. Never seen that one
before.

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ck2
Wow with that kind of payout I am surprised there aren't counterfeit chinese
clones by now.

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mikek
This isn't exactly a mystery. They know where the woman lives.

~~~
SwellJoe
On what do you base that assertion?

~~~
VLM
[http://cleanbayarea.com/portfolio/e-waste-
recycling/](http://cleanbayarea.com/portfolio/e-waste-recycling/)

"Our electronic waste pick-up service is free for all residents of Northern
California, CA."

OP is likely assuming they operate like my local dump/recycling center where
they record my drivers license info every time I visit and drop something off
(electronic or otherwise). Believe it or not they used to physically write
down the data, now they swipe. Locally they don't tag what I drop off
individually with my ID but they do have my ID on file as a visitor on a
certain date.

I have no idea why they collect the data as opposed to mere verification. I
suspect its something along the lines of a large difference between resident
rates (free) vs business rates (if you have to ask, you can't afford it)

~~~
SwellJoe
The article explicitly says he did not collect her information. Is the
argument being made that he is lying about that detail of the story? To what
end?

~~~
VLM
huh that's interesting, I missed that and in my mental model of op's theory,
op obviously also missed it, for the model to make any sense.

I talked to a coworker and in his village they also gather visitor data, and
for environmental reasons the recycle center will never turn hazmat away,
ever, but the data is forwarded to the city who will lean very heavily on
business owners who try to use free resident hazmat instead of paying for
commercial hazmat disposal. With lead free solder and RoHS I wonder if some
day we'll reclassify electronics (at least modern lead free electronics) as
plain old garbage instead of hazmat.

There are, probably, many political ways to organize hazmat collection and its
funding, some of which aren't going to make sense to outsiders.

