I’ve been tracking this one with great interest. From the description:
> Up for sale is one of the rarest Apple computers you’ll find. This is a prototype/clear Macintosh Portable (M5126) backlit. I’ve been collecting for many years now and only know of four of these left in the world. All of which, based on my knowledge, exist in private collections i.e. Lonnie Mimm’s, an individual in Europe, this one, my personal collection. This is one of my favorite Apple computers and the fact this is a clear prototype make is unbelievably rare. The chances of one of these coming up for sale again are very low.
And:
> The engineer I bought this from worked on the Macintosh Portable project. Another buddy of his, who also worked on the project and was leaving the Apple, said he planned on throwing this prototype out. The person I bought this from literally found it in his buddies trash before he left Apple. The engineer I bought this from kept it in his office until he left Apple and kept it safe for 28 years.
Follow the link, check out the pictures. Beautiful. From what I can tell, this is the prototype of this device, which Apple sold from 1989 to 1991 at the incredibly expensive price of $7,300 (about $14,000 in today’s dollars). Crazy.
As I write this, the prototype has a current bid of $8,100. Don’t tempt me, internet.
The Portable was a very fine machine. I recall going to an Apple training session for A/UX on the new Portable. That was quite a forward-looking approach.
Somewhere around here I have a Bernoulli Box designed for the Portable, it has its own lead-acid battery. A completely self-contained, self-powered Mac with external storage on 40Mb Bernoulli carts was way ahead of its time.
The price reminds me of something I noticed recently.
I have a bunch of old Macs (and other computers); I recently decided to modernize my Quadra 700 and use it for Old Mac Games and such.
Tossed in a SCSI-to-SD card, maxed out the ram (it’s cheap now), etc. Now it’s a high-spec machine, and quieter and faster [drive-wise] than new.
I noticed via Wikipedia that the base model sale price of a Q700, adjusted for inflation, is over $10,000 in current dollars.
For a 40mhz 68040.
We live in a golden age.
An absolute beauty.
Also noted … this auction includes free shipping to US addresses, but $900 shipping to Canada.
Eep.
Allow me to horrify you with the web page “What if I had bought Apple Stock instead?” It only goes as far back as 1997, so I have no idea what I would have made if I bought AAPL instead of that $3500 Mac IIcx back in 89.. or that Apple II in the early 80s.
https://kyleconroy.com/apple-stock