Buy 10 Mac Studios, or this one Macintosh Color Classic
William Gallagher
For $20,000 you could be the one to buy an Apple Macintosh Color Classic originally bought in the early 1990s — and then never taken out of its box.
The Macintosh Color Classic was designed by Danielle De Iuliiss and first released in 1993 just before the dawn of PowerPC Macs. Built to be reminiscent of the original Mac, but with a color screen, it originally sold at price points starting at $1,400 — which adjusted for inflation is $2,887 in 2022.
Now one is up for auction on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $19,995, plus shipping. That's six times more than it first cost, when corrected for 2022's money. Minus shipping, a Mac Studio at its base sells for $1999.
"This computer was bought new at the time but was returned by the customer," says the listing. "After this he [sic] was always left behind in the store and never touched or looked at again."
It features a 10-inch Sony Trinitron display with a resolution of 512 by 384 pixels per inch. The processor is a Motorola 68030 CPU, and the model listed comes with an ADB Apple Keyboard II.
The listing does not specify any configuration options, so it's not clear whether the Color Classic includes a hard drive — but if it is really new in the box, it does, and it's probably 40 megabytes. It is a version sold in Europe, though, so it has "Colour Classic" written on the front, plus a UK-style keyboard with elongated Return key.
David Schloss
Andrew Orr
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
Andrew O'Hara
Amber Neely
5 Comments
If you had simply purchased the S&P 500 for $1400 in 1993, you’d be able to buy this, and still have an extra $1,333.65 left over to pocket.
See: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1993?amount=1400#sp500
Back in the day I really wanted one of those. But an LCIII was more in my budget. Now not so much. Though if I could find a dead SE, or even Colour Classic, and put a Mini inside to drive a nice, tiny, LCD screen, I might be up for that.
Not sure about the price, or the utility of that Mac, but the keyboards's sure a winner! With the help of an ADB to USB adapter, I'm still using the ADB Apple Extended Keyboard II that came with my mom's old IIvx. :)
That's a French AZERTY keyboard.
It's tempting to put in an offer, just to see what the demand truly is. Unless you're a collector or museum, I think the novelty would wear off and then you'd be wishing it was faster.
I have an Apple IIe and two Mac SE's that boot up beautifully. I download fun classic games from the Internet via my iPhone and the cassette port to the Apple IIe. I had a couple hard drives for the SE's, but they're showing their age. I've considered SCSI to SD-card adapters for those, which would make them fast and silent.
Or I could gut all three of them and put some Mac Mini's, Intel NUCs, or Raspberry Pi's inside, with vMac, SheepShaver, Basilisk, etc.
Definitely not worth even half the asking price, even if it was the far more usable Color Classic II. It's always nice to have non-yellowed plastics, but not for $10K or $20k. That sale is basically targeting wealthy vintage Mac fans who have more money than sense.
With that said, a more economically priced "used" Color Classic is a worthy vintage Mac to consider buying when you understand the upgrades that will need to be done to make it a fun machine to use. Upgrading includes swapping out the painfully slow 16MHz 68030 motherboard with either one from an LC 550 (making it a CC II) or one from an LC 575 (making it into a MYSTIC). The LC575 has a fast 33MHz 68040 that really makes it a fun machine. But you can then take your LC 575 motherboard to the next level by swapping out the LC040 with an FPU version CPU, then use an overclocker. My Mystic is currently running at 50MHz, which is only possible by using fast 60ns VRAM. Doing the VGA mod takes the resolution up to be compatible with most games. Adding a second speaker gives you internal stereo, further enhancing vintage gaming.
You can add even more fun by installing an Apple IIe Card, giving a very authentic Apple II experience that is not an emulator. Swap out the old spinner HDD with a SCSI to SD card solution like MacSD or BlueSCSI and a SCSI extension cable, then add a fun clicker device to simulate the head movement sound of a real hard drive. Be sure to also get a FloppyEMU for convenient access to a host of vintage disk images from Macintosh Garden, as well as numerous Apple II images. Then add a FlippyFloppy to give your CC Mystic an external floppy drive connector specifically made for the FloppyEMU, which has a toggle switch to allow continued use of the CC's internal floppy drive too.
You also need to swap out the electrolytic capacitors on the Analog Board and on whatever motherboard you intend to use. You probably will also need to swap out a broken plastic gear inside the stock internal floppy drive. You can even change the text on the front badge with a dry transfer sheet.
The amazing upgradability of the Color Classic makes it one of the most beloved models in the compact Mac series, on par with the SE/30.
I'll leave you with a 1993 Computer Chronicles video about the Color Classic (starts at 2:22)...
https://youtu.be/DCxlkSYdrpw?t=142