'Mysterious Woman' Throws Out Vintage Apple Computer Worth $200,000 The Silicon Valley recycling company that owns the center where the woman deposited the computer is searching for her in order to give her half the proceeds from its recent sale.
By Laura Entis
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
One man's trash is another man's treasure. Or in this case, one woman's trash is actually a rare, vintage Apple-1 computer, one of only 200 originals built by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne that recently fetched $200,000 in an online auction.
NBC Bay Area is reporting that an older woman, between the age of 60 and 70, dropped off the computer, buried in a box of discarded electronics, at CleanBayArea's recycling center in Milpitas, Calif., about a month ago.
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Later discovered by a recycling manager sorting through the boxes, the Apple-1 computer – which was built in 1976 and was originally priced at $666.66 – was put up for auction, and sold for $200,000 (a considerable sum, but also considerably less than the $905,000 another Apple-1 computer recently fetched at a New York auction).
The recycling company is now searching for the woman so it can give her $100,000, or half the proceeds from the sale.
"We couldn't believe our eyes, we thought it was fake. It was real," Victor Gichun, CleanBayArea's vice president told NBC Bay Area.
Only in Silicon Valley.
Related: Vintage Apple 1 Computer Auctioned Off for Record-Setting $905,000
