Fraud by any other name...

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gsmcten's picture
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Last seen: 5 years 8 months ago
Joined: Oct 4 2005 - 18:52
Posts: 2629
Fraud by any other name...

This is being sold on eBay as an "Original Apple 1"

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Developed-by-Steve-Wozniak-Exactly-Duplicated-By-M-Newton-Original-Apple-I-S-9-/190779833180?pt=US_Vintage_Computers_Mainframes&hash=item2c6b5d3b5c

That is according to the title.
If you read further it is a replica that they want $3500.00 for.
Many folks here knoiw that you can get one of these for a whole lot less.

Oh. By the way...You can't send them an e-mail about it because they aren't accepting any!

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Last seen: 1 week 6 days ago
Joined: Oct 9 2011 - 12:54
Posts: 1352
Re: Fraud by any other name...

This guy always sells stuff at beyond top dollar. He is a reputable seller. I have bought/overpaid for stuff from him before because sometimes if you need something bad enough and can't wait to find it anywhere you have to go to him. He is starting to effect prices with this as well for other sellers. I just had to buy a rare card for my altair and had to pay a price based on a similar sale he had in the past. My non-ebay seller wouldn't budge.

Hey I even had a laugh when he sold one of Mike Willegal's brain boards with apple-1 wozoniun pack and integer basic for $250. Didn't even last a day on eBay before someone bought it. I think they are less than $100 assembled direcly from Mike. I think this means there may actually be two markets out there. The vintage computer hobbiest, who won't over pay and are looking for a deal and the true collector who money is an abstract thing and its the item that matters. Look at the Apple-1 that sold for $640k and the minimal but working altair that sold at the same auction for 15k.

Now onto the topic of this specific sale. Yes you could buy a Newton-1 cheaper. The seller is not an apple-1 guy, so he would have no clue that to really equip a "copy" with correct date and manufacturer parts will cost a lot more than 3.5k he is asking. A white ceramic 6502 could cost you $1000 or more for a working one alone. Not to mention having to buy $200 in chips to get a single $2 chip you need and the many many hours trying to find them. Trust me I'm building another one of my crazy accurate Mimeos right now. Oh and I'm not counting how long they take to build and bring up. Now granted I'm on the high side with a couple of hundred hours to build one because of all my nuttiness getting everything perfectly accurate,but I think you could build one in a little over a day if you were fast so even at $3500 for a working board with generic TTL chips (not exact ones) I think is a good deal for someone who can't solder.

Just my two cents,
Cheers,
Corey

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