Apple-1 'Celebration' Prototype Board

The board between the prototype and the product

Steve Wozniak had finished the basic design of his computer by March 1, 1976. He wanted to give the schematics away to fellow hobbyists at the Homebrew Computer Club; his friend Steve Jobs saw a business in it and persuaded him to start a company selling printed circuit boards. Wozniak designed the circuit, but the board itself was laid out by Howard Cantin, a printed-circuit layout engineer at Atari, where Jobs had worked. Apple commissioned that first layout in March 1976.

Cantin's work produced a tan phenolic prototype, an inexpensive test board that needed extensive reworking before it ran properly. It exposed layout and timing problems. Once those were fixed, Jobs and Wozniak needed to know whether the corrected design worked on a proper fiberglass circuit board before they committed to production.

This is that board. Described by the sellers as the first corrected-layout board, it was assembled in the spring of 1976 and used to validate the Apple-1 design before Apple built the first 50 machines for Paul Terrell's Byte Shop. It was never intended for retail sale. As one report put it, if it had not passed, Terrell's order could not have been delivered.

Two Steves, one order

Paul Terrell was opening a computer store in Mountain View, California, called the Byte Shop. After seeing the Apple computer demonstrated at the Homebrew Computer Club, he offered to buy 50 units at $500 each, but only fully assembled; he did not want bare boards.

Jobs took Terrell's purchase order to an electronics distributor and talked the credit manager into supplying parts on 30-day terms, promising to build the computers, collect from Terrell and pay the bill. Jobs, Wozniak and a small crew worked day and night to build and test the machines and delivered on time. Terrell, who had expected complete computers with a case, keyboard and monitor, received a batch of assembled boards, but paid as promised.

Apple's first check, No. 1, dated March 16, 1976, was written for $500 to Howard Cantin for the board layout and signed by both Jobs and Wozniak. To raise that money, Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak his HP-65 calculator. Apple Computer Company was formed on April 1, 1976.

The Apple-1 went on sale in July 1976 for $666.66, a one-third markup on the $500 wholesale price; Wozniak said he simply liked repeating digits. About 200 were made. It was discontinued after the Apple II arrived in 1977, and Apple offered owners trade-ins and then destroyed many of the returned boards, which is part of why so few survive.

How to tell it apart

Its construction separates it from every other surviving Apple-1. It uses wave-soldered Robinson-Nugent sockets rather than the cheaper Texas Instruments sockets on production boards. Its components are a mix of hand-soldered parts that happened to be available locally rather than the parts Apple later bought in quantity, including two common silver Sprague 39D capacitors that were not computer-rated but could be found at a radio repair shop.

It carries a smaller, non-standard heatsink over the voltage regulators, with no sign that the larger production heatsink was ever installed. And it has a unique modification to the 74123 timing circuit that handles memory refresh, consistent with the timing problems Apple was diagnosing before production.

Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen examined the board in May 2016 and revised his report in December 2025. He graded its cosmetic condition at 6.5 to 7.0; it was not tested for function. In a video about the board, Cohen said it was likely hand-soldered by Steve Jobs himself. It is recorded as #75 in the Apple-1 Registry under the name 'Celebration.' The sources consulted do not explain how it got that nickname.

Fifty years later, $2.75 million

The board was offered as lot 6003 in an online sale timed to Apple's 50th anniversary, with an estimate of $500,000 or more. It came with a period-correct Key Tronic keyboard from about 1977, a period-correct power supply, a vintage Sony television used as a monitor, and replica copies of the Apple-1 operation manual and schematic, both signed by Wozniak in blue felt-tip pen. Early in January the bidding stood above $100,000.

The sale closed on January 29, 2026. The board sold for $2,750,000, five and a half times its estimate. Reports differ on whether that figure is the hammer price or includes the buyer's premium; the sale listing shows it simply as the price sold for.

The result nearly tripled the previous high for an Apple-1, the $945,000 paid for Steve Jobs's office demonstration unit from the Paul Allen collection. In the same sale, Apple's first check brought $2,409,886, and the whole auction totaled about $8 million.

The earlier tan phenolic prototype, the board this one was built to correct, sold separately in August 2022 for $677,196. It survives in badly damaged condition.

The numbers

Apple-1 launch price

$666.66 (July 1976)

Processor

MOS 6502 at 1 MHz

Apple-1 production

About 200 units

First order

50 assembled units for the Byte Shop at $500 each

Discontinued

September 30, 1977

Timeline

1. Mar 1975

   Wozniak begins attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club.

2. Mar 1, 1976

   Wozniak has completed the basic design of the computer.

3. Mar 1976

   Apple commissions the first Apple-1 board layout from Howard Cantin.

4. Mar 16, 1976

   Apple writes its first check, $500 to Cantin, signed by Jobs and Wozniak.

5. Apr 1, 1976

   Apple Computer Company is formed by Jobs, Wozniak and Ronald Wayne.

6. 1976

   Spring: the 'Celebration' board is assembled on fiberglass to validate the corrected design.

7. Jul 1976

   The Apple-1 goes on sale at $666.66 after the Byte Shop order for 50 assembled units.

8. Apr 1977

   The Apple-1 price drops to $475 as the Apple II is introduced.

9. Sep 30, 1977

   The Apple-1 is discontinued.

10. May 2016

    Corey Cohen examines the board.

11. Aug 2022

    The earlier tan phenolic Apple-1 prototype sells at auction for $677,196.

12. Dec 2025

    Cohen revises his condition report on the board.

13. Jan 29, 2026

    The board sells for $2,750,000 in an online auction for Apple's 50th anniversary.

The world in 1976

• May 24, 1976

  Concorde service to Washington, D.C., begins.

• Jun 16, 1976

  The Soweto uprising begins in South Africa.

• Jul 4, 1976

  Israeli commandos free more than 100 hostages held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

• Jul 17, 1976

  The Summer Olympics open in Montreal; Nadia Comaneci scores the first of seven perfect 10s the next day.

• Jul 20, 1976

  Viking 1 lands on Mars.

• Sep 9, 1976

  Mao Zedong dies in Beijing.

• Nov 2, 1976

  Jimmy Carter defeats Gerald Ford for the presidency.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Apple-1 'Celebration' Prototype Board is number 35 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (34 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Two of its capacitors were ordinary parts of the kind sold at a radio repair shop, not computer-rated components.
• Apple's first check paid for the board layout behind this computer, and it sold in the same auction for $2,409,886.
• Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak his HP-65 calculator to fund Apple's first $500.
• Wozniak said the $666.66 price came from liking repeating digits, not from any reference to the number of the beast.
• Apple destroyed many Apple-1 boards it took back in trade-ins for the Apple II.
• The board sold for five and a half times its $500,000 estimate.
• It has never been tested to see whether it still runs.