17 Nov
2009
17 Nov
'09
9:40 p.m.
I think a fairly high price is warranted based on what I've seen before. They
don't come up that often for sale, but I think the starting bid is out of whack. Also
out of whack is the $3000 S&H to "discourage" shipping. You'll
definitely not get your price if you do that, and that's what shipping insurance is
for.
________________________________
From: Jules Richardson <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com>
To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tue, November 17, 2009 3:35:36 PM
Subject: Re: Non-fake Apple 1 on ebay
Curt @ Atari Museum wrote:
There are only around 250 of them, they were hand
built in Woz's garage, mostly by Steve Woz and Jobs and only a few have surfaced over
the years making them rare and they have continued to go up in value over the years as
more and more publicly known auctions and sales have made headlines on major site and the
SJ Mercury Newspaper, so they fetch big bucks.
It's the insanely high price I can't work out, I suppose. History's littered
with early 'home' machines with low production runs, and machines from that sort
of era (give a couple of years!) and with that sort of spec.
In terms of experience, yes it's special - but the same sort of special can be had for
a fraction of the price, which means I'm struggling to get past thinking that it's
maybe $2k for the physical item + ephemera, and $48k for the name of a certain piece of
fruit :-)
Maybe it simply comes down to the age-old "Apple people" vs. "non Apple
people" thing and it just won't make sense no matter how hard I try...
Or maybe, like you say, it's all just fueled by the media - one sells, media report
it, generates more interest when the next one sells, media report it etc. etc. (and I do
believe ebay tends to make prices go up way over and above what they'd be like if ebay
didn't exist, so it can't help either)
cheers
Jules