http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230691/Inoperable_Apple_1_may_fetch_126K_at_Christie_s_auction
Lots of quotable stuff here, especially....
"The money being spent on Apple 1s hasn't trickled down to equally-worth antiques or shaken even older personal computers from attics"
Which to me says all those guys dragging their old Apple IIc down from the attic putting it on eBay for a small fortune are in for a surprise 
Cheers,
Corey
You don't need to wait for that, someone tried it a few years ago with an Obtronix on eBay. Lucky for everyone this site existed and the sale was found out. The problem for the Apple-1 is no serial numbers and not every board has a known history. This will become more important as time goes on that the history of a board needs to be documented just like fine art does to prove it's authenticity.
Cheers,
Corey
As i explained in another posting earlier, the surrounding facts give additional sight to the topic....
only about 200 have been sold directly to private and about 250 sold to a consumer-market ....
so all together about 450 original apple 1´s ever sold
assume the most of them to be sold to people at the age of 20 to 30 in the years between ´76 and ´78....
so if you add that together that consumers would now age up to something about 55 years to 65 years....
due to age and statistics you could guess at least half of the consumers have been burried by accidents, incidents or
problems like heartstroke, cancer, stroke and so on.
Guess at least 30% to 40% of the computers have been dumped in the years from ´79 to ´85 because the owners didn´t keep the old computer after it had been replaced with a new one or after a damage ( by electric, fire or flood )....
And also at those which didn´t survive up till today and kept their apple 1 in the cellar or in the barn...
The ladies that remained later after the passaway of their husbands ... a lot of them were so angry about the fact that their husbands spent so much time upfront of "the damn thing" that they dumped "the damn thing" at the very moment they had a chance to do that ( and of course didn´t realize what they dumped away in the trash ... - a paycheck worth more than the entire house ....) lol...
i really guess not more than some 30 to 40 authentic apple 1 computers now "still alive somewhere" ....
and from that you can subtract those 3 boards that have been framed-up like popart
( up to my mind some strange and funny relation to the term of preservation.... )
who would come up next with the idea to lay a Bugatti on the side in a steelpress and afterwards seal the "flattened Bugatti" with 2K glasfiber to the wall of his garage as decoration ? Jay Leno would drive mad on such an idea !
preservation of history is in fact not a habit familiar to everybody.....
and just to add to the topic of reproductions and copycats....
its the same problem like in everything that cost much.... i really don´t want to know while visiting a Art-museum
how many reproductions and fakes i have viewed.... as explained the paperwork along with the boards gets more important
to get a documented string of the way the board has taken ( and just to bear this in mind too: even documentation can become target of being faked too .... )
finally some day it will become impossible to get proof without scientific and forensic expertise..... similar to art...
sincerely speedyG
Speedy,
Only one correction... of the 200 boards produced about 175 were sold.... They were even sold after the Apple II was released but at a discounted price.
Apple did also have a trade in program for the Apple-1, so other than 2 rescued from the bandsaw by the Huston brothers, a bunch (no one knows how many) were destroyed by Steve Jobs to free up Woz from supporting the Apple-1 and allowing him to perform other work.
We know that one was melted in a fire at Ken and Roberta Williams house (from Sierra Online fame)
and we know the ones mounted on a board, at least one of them is up and running in Austria.
It also seems the early ones (pre-NTI) are more common survivors, maybe because they were prized possessions of early adopters, but will never know. The later batch from NTI is the batch that has fewer around and the two boards that hold the record auction price were both NTI boards (personally I think the pre-NTI were cooler looking).
And you are right at some point you will need forensics to determine authenticity, but until them Mike Willegal's registry is the best bet we have to make sure we don't have a repeat of the Obtronix incident on eBay where someone ties to pass off a replica (not even a good one) as the real thing.
Cheers,
Corey
Hello Corey,
its just the common problem.... big money attracts all kinds of criminals.... same like at art....
you allways can make a really good fake... its just a question of time and money... the more money the more efforts
to make a fake...
thats life....
sincerely speedyG