This is being posted as a service to the retro-computing community.  The following message from VCF founder and respected hobbyist Sellam Ismail appeared on the Classiccmp mailing list this evening.

eBay seller id "tvrsales" is currently selling property stolen from the Vintage Computer Festival.

If you are planning on buying anything of a vintage computer nature from eBay seller "tvrsales" in Stockton, California, please know that you are most likely bidding on stolen property.

The VCF Archives were stolen by Tri-Valley Recycling (eBay ID "tvrsales") in cahoots with the landlords of the building where it was sold. The sordid tale can be read about through lawsuit material already on my
website for download: http://vintagetech.com/download/lawsuit/

Whether or not you believe Sellam’s account of this dispute, it may be wise to reconsider bidding on items from eBay user “tvrsales” until any legal issues have been settled. Caveat emptor.

If you’re into collecting Apple II gear, you know prototypes are hard to find and highly sought after. So when an authentic prototype like this Apple //c shows up anywhere, it gets some attention.

This specimen appears to be from late in the development phase, and it may even be a seed machine ie. pre-release machines sent to third party developers prior to a product’s launch. The case is nearly finalized and the keyboard looks like the final production model. When this machine was being reviewed and used, the fabrication of the final //c was probably ready for immediate startup.

Of all the Apple II models, prototype (and seed) versions of the Apple //c are the most accessible to collectors because as protos go, they’re the most common. Is it worth USD $5500 though? Only time will tell.

Update: With just over two days remaining in the auction, the Buy It Now price has been lowered to $3,700.

Could it really be Steve Jobs’s personal Apple IIe? The auction description is vague and doesn’t offer much in the way of documentation or even pictures of the machine. Check it out for yourself on eBay auction 150822390887. If you want it, it can be yours for a mere 45K USD (negotiable) and $35 shipping (probably not negotiable).

The Apple Computer Company Partnership Agreement, which established Apple as a partnership between Jobs, Woz and Ron Wayne and was signed by all three co-founders, went for an incredible $1.35 million dollars at a Sotheby’s auction yesterday.  Once you add in all the various fees attached to the sale, the final cost weighs in at a hefty $1.6 million.  Expected to fetch as much as $150,000 in Tuesday’s auction, the three-page typewritten document was made obsolete when the new Apple Computer Co., was officially created on January 3, 1977 and bought out the nine month old partnership.  Wayne kept the document and later sold it to a collectible documents dealer who then sold it to a private collector in the late 1990s.

This should put to rest any doubt about the increasing hunger for early Apple II collectibles, especially through legitimate auction houses.

Then again, it’s still possible to get lucky and find a gem like this for a steal at an estate auction or thrift store.

I scan eBay a couple of times each day and occasionally amid the cliched ‘rare’ items, I’ll find something interesting. For example, this Apple IIc-equipped electric car. According to the seller, the //c was used to monitor the car’s performance.

Yet another ‘rare’ new in the box Apple //c system with a $2500 price tag has shown up. EDIT: Apparently, it sold! That’s the THIRD (or fourth or fifth depending on how you classify new) sealed //c system to appear in as many years on eBay. There was a time when you could pick up a new system like this one for around $400-$600 USD, but recently speculators, collectors and uninformed buyers have driven up seller’s price expectations — a trend that seems to be spreading to other areas of the Apple retro-computing hobby.

Check out this ‘open’ box and allegedly new Apple //c system which started out nearly in the $2K range but has since seen a few price drops. How low will the seller go until someone decides to buy? EDIT: The Apple //c sold shortly after we posted our article. Maybe one of our readers jumped on it.

Bulgarian Apple II developer bootZero.com is back from hiatus and again making their unique and interesting adapters available on eBay. See their auction listings for additional information or check out our previous coverage.

Will this Apple //c go for crazy money too? We’ll be watching eBay auction 250870534799 to find out. I seriously doubt the seller’s use of the term ‘fanboy’ in the auction description will be appreciated by any potential buyers.

Take an otherwise unremarkable Apple II Plus, put some stickers on it that make it resemble the Dharma computer from the popular television series “Lost” and viola… you have the makings for a clever way to potentially get a little extra moolah out of that plain old machine.

Mike Willegal wrote in about Dick and Cliff Huston, two brothers who worked at Apple (employees 25 and 27) from 1977 to mid 1984. The Huston Brothers are auctioning off a collection of early prototypes on eBay. You can learn more about each item and it’s authenticity at Cliff Huston’s web site.