An original Apple Lisa-1 has sold for $56,100 USD on the auction site, Ebay. The Lisa-1, a completely functional unit, is owned by Ebay user, professorinschubert in Karlsdorf-Neuthard, Germany. According to the story behing the machine, it was purchased from a collector who bought it more than 34 years ago when it was released.
I got this Lisa from a collector who purchased the computer over 34 years ago and only turned it on a few times after storing it for the rest of the time.
Also (included are )a lot of manuals, accessories and rare 5,25 discs are coming with the computer.
The auction included some of the original manuals and floppies, which in this day and age are quite hard to find. Most of the original Lisa-1 machines that are available are also no longer functional but this is due in part to the fickle nature of the “Twiggy” floppy drives on the machines. That makes this machine one of only a handful of Lisa-1 machines still functioning, one of which was actually owned by Steve Jobs himself prior to his death.
As for Apple sales, the Lisa-1 soon gave way to the Lisa-2 as the 3.5 inch floppy drive had replaced the twiggy drives in the later Lisa-2 machines. While the Lisa was the second major commercial flop for Apple Computer, Inc, the follow on to the Lisa was the venerable Macintosh which became the mainstay of Apple’s long term business.
The auction for this machine went very quickly to 55,000 plus dollars and was there for several days prior to the ending of the auction. It wound up selling at $1000 more in the last few minutes of the auction.
You can check out the video of the machine on the seller’s Youtube channel or in the video below:
