A Silicon Valley-based recycling company is looking for a “mysterious lady” who dropped off a rare vintage Apple computer, so it can give her $100,000.
About a month ago, a woman of between 60-70 years of age dropped off a couple of boxes of waste containing electronic junk to CleanBayArea’s recycling center in Milpitas, CA.
Or so she thought.
Actually, the box contained one of only 200 original Apple-1 computers built by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne, NBC Bay Area reported.
CleanBayArea sold the piece of technology history in a private auction for $200,000 and is now looking for the woman to give her 50 percent of the proceeds.
The Apple-1 computers were produced in 1976 and sold for $666.66 at the time.
A CleanBayArea recycling manager was sorting through the boxes that had been dropped off by the anonymous woman when he came across the machine. The woman said her husband had passed away and that she decided to clean up the garage.
“We couldn’t believe our eyes, we thought it was fake. It was real,” Victor Gichun, CleanBayArea’s vice president told NBC Bay Area.
Last year, an Apple-1 computer fetched $905,000 at an auction at Bonhams in New York — the highest price such a device has sold for.
So anonymous woman, if you’re reading this, you could be about to get a windfall.
