Six-Figure Worth Apple I Dumped At Recycling Center

Credit: NBC Bay Area

A woman has tossed out a bunch of old computers for recycling in San Francisco — including a rare Apple I worth a six-figure sum.

The recycling center is now appealing for the woman to get in touch so that it can pay her $100,000. Staff at CleanBayArea have no record of the woman’s name or contact details, but say she would be recognized if she returned to make the claim.

The woman, thought to be in her 60s, visited the center in Milpitas a month ago. She dropped off “a couple of boxes of e-waste” of items left in her garage by her recently-deceased husband.

It wasn’t until staff opened up one of the packages that they discovered an Apple I computer. It’s one of just 200 units made in 1976 by Steve Wozniak at the Jobs family garage. Only around 50 are known to have survived, with just a handful in working order; it’s not known if the unit dropped off by the woman was working.

While CleanBayArea is primarily a service for businesses looking to clear their premises of obsolete material, it has a policy of selling potentially valuable items and splitting the proceeds with the person who brought it in for recycling.

It did so with the Apple 1, getting $200,000 from a private collector. The record sale price for any Apple 1 was $900,000 at a public auction last year, though most publicized sales in recent years have been in the low six figures.