One of the rare working examples of Apple-1, Apple’s first product in the history of personal computers, the “Hatfield Apple-1” will go up for auction again. The device, registered as number 48 in the Apple-1 Registry and signed by Steve Wozniak, is estimated to fetch between 500 thousand and 800 thousand dollars; bids will be accepted between October 4 and October 14. Fewer than 75 Apple-1 units have survived to the present day, and only a few are still working. After Fred Hatfield complained about the software, Steve Jobs offered to trade it for an Apple II, but Hatfield refused to pay 400 dollars. Sold for 40 thousand dollars in 2013, the device was repaired, signed by Wozniak, and found a buyer for 671 thousand 400 dollars at the previous sale. Jobs’s letter to Hatfield will also be offered.
Why it matters
The scarcity of working examples turns this auction from merely a high-priced collector’s sale into a measure of how limited Apple-1’s physical legacy is. The price reached in the device’s previous sale and the new estimate range offer an opportunity to compare how the same product has been valued over the years. The process that began with Hatfield’s software problem also shows that the user experience and after-sales approach of early Apple products are part of this history. Since the contents of Jobs’s letter have not been disclosed, it remains unclear whether the document will shed new light on the details of the incident. The auction will put the correspondence up for evaluation alongside the device.
Background
Apple is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 24 reports mentioning the name in the past 90 days; the latest is dated September 4, 2026.