Most computer devices have one thing in common: as soon as you buy them they quickly begin aging - not so gracefully - and become obsolete within a couple of years. But, as always, there are exceptions where its nostalgic value greatly outweighs its component's value... as is the case with Apple's first computer, the Apple I, originally sold in 1976 with a "demonic" $666.66 price tag - a real bargain that got you a 8bit CPU running at 1Mhz, and 4KB of RAM (which you could expand to 8KB, or even an amazing 48KB - I wonder how much that would cost back then!)
If you though all these years later you could have such a machine for free... you'd be wrong. At an auction a working Apple I signed by Steve Wozniak has been sold for $671,400 - over half a million euros! That's more than enough to get you over 1000 iPads... but I guess there are things that can't be compared that way.
Although it's suspected that just a few dozen Apple I remain (Apple tried to get them back when it launched the Apple II the following year offering trade-ins and replacements), you never know what you might find in a garage sale somewhere. Maybe in the dusty card boxes in your attic you can have one of these highly valued Apple I computers... and the way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if one of these day one fetched over 1 million dollars!
Now... if only all the 70's electronic devices would now be valued at over 1000x their original price... :)
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