Group of 12 rare Apple-1s displayed at Vintage Computer Festival

An Apple-1 at the Vintage Computer Festival [via Twitter/Dave Rahardja]

The Vintage Computer Festival West, produced by the Vintage Computer Federation and took place on August 3 and 4, is an annual event with the aim of showing visitors older computers that evolved into the computing devices available today. The event featured many items, including a restored original Apollo Guidance Computer, with original, restored, and working models on display.

As part of the assembly, a total of 12 Apple-1 computers were brought to the same spot. The computer is a rarity, with approximately 70 units believed to still exist albeit not all of them functioning, so the appearance of 12 of them at the event is an extremely rare occasion.

Original and current owners of the Apple-1 were also in attendance alongside early Apple employees, with some taking part in a panel about the computers' history.

The Apple-1 is a sought-after relic of computing history, originally built by hand in 1976 by Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and sold through computer store Byte Shop, though only around 200 were ever produced and 175 units were sold.

Originally, it was sold for $666.66, and lacked features like a display, keyboard, power supply, or housing, elements which are taken for granted in modern-day computers.

The rarity makes it a potentially valuable piece, with it occasionally surfacing in auctions. One briefcase-based Apple-1 was sold in May for $471,000, while other sales have seen transactions exceeding $900,000 for the device. The high price also extends to the manual, with one recent auction in July seeing a copy sold for $12,296.