The Pop-Culture E-Zine
Back in February 2015 we told you about the Commodore 65 (C65) that sold for a then record of AUD$26,915.
Fast forward to today (November 9, 2017), and the latest C65 on eBay (serial number 000016) has sold for a whopping (and now new record price) AUD$123, 449! Geez we could buy a lot of pinball machines with that money.
Interestingly, the listing was deleted from eBay after the auction ended – time to speculate starts now!
image source: eBay
If you needed evidence in how desirable a rare retro computing item could be, then surely the auction result for the holiest of holy grails, the Commodore 65, is a great case in point – selling for a record €20,050 (Ed: that’s $26,915AUD!), it’s rarity and desirability is assured.
Being just a collector is not enough to be able to compete and procure such extremely rare and very expensive items. Hardcore collectors or collectors backed by some very generous benefactors are the only ones that can hunt and end up with these precious pieces of computing history.
The Commodore 65 is definitely the epitome of rare – created by Fred Bowen and his buddies at Commodore Business Machines at the beginning of the 1990s, the computer never saw the light of day and was subsequently canned. When Commodore met its demise in 1994, a number of prototype C65 computers were sold on the open market. For those that picked one up, well, let’s just say that they were investing in a goldmine which would reap benefits in the future – and that it has on this occasion!
Source: Thomas Conté | Zed Yago | eBay