Seeking the Woman Who Recycled an Apple I Computer Worth $200,000

Apple may be worth billions of dollars today, but back in 1975, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were just two guys in a garage with a dream. Their first try at that dream was the Apple I — a computer hand-built by Wozniak and Jobs. They only built 200 units, complete with a fully assembled circuit board that boasted up to 32 kilobytes of RAM that only required users to provide their own ASCII keyboard and video display to make it a functional machine. It sold for $666.66, because Wozniak said he “liked repeating digits.”

Today, it’s a collectors item worth $200,000 and someone threw one away. The legendary computer was dropped off by a woman at the Clean Bay Area recycling firm, likely not knowing the worth of the contents in the box she had handed over. The recycling facility managed to sell the Apple I to a private collector for $200,000 and now wishes to split the earnings from the sale with the mystery donor.

Sharon Noguchi from the San Jose Mercury News interviewed Vice President Victor Gichun of the recycling firm. He said the woman was cleaning out the garage after her husband’s death and declined giving her name or taking a receipt for the items she left.

To claim her check, Gichun said the mystery woman needs only show up at the company’s warehouse at 1310 Piper Drive in Milpitas, California. I’m sure there will be a few people who will try to claim the prize as their own, but they may not be able to fool Gichun. As he said, “To prove who she is, I just need to look at her.”

Read more about the story at the San Jose Mercury News.

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