The best publicity for a rare item is listing it on eBay

What do you do when you’ve got a valuable item and want as much publicity as possible? Someone with a 32 year old Apple 1, hand built by Steve Wozniak on of the founders of Apple, posed the question to the San Francisco journal.

The answer he got was that it wasn’t valuable enough to “spark much general media interest before you sell it, but you don’t need much. Authentic Apple I’s come up for auction so infrequently that simply putting it on eBay should get the word out and attract spirited bidding“.

And he was right – the Apple 1 sold for $17,950, a couple of thousand over the estimated price of $14-16,000.

Simply listing a rare but sought over item on eBay is more than enough to attract interest and the word will soon spread amongst interested bidders. The story was picked up by Cult of the Mac and almost $18,000 isn’t a bad result for an item that sold 32 years ago for just $666.66.

2 Responses on "The best publicity for a rare item is listing it on eBay"

1. 1
   Steve Antony Williams says:

   October 6, 2009 at 11:30 am

   I once sold a “rare” retro games console on eBay. It wasn’t doing an awful lot then it was posted on Retrogames.com and the bids went through the roof

   As for Apple 1′s I’m sure one of my mates has one of those.

   Steve
2. 2
   ebuyerfb says:

   October 6, 2009 at 12:04 pm

   I don’t remember if it was an Apple 1 but there was a very old but brand new, sealed in package Apple someone bought on eBay a few years ago. The winner then proceeded to open the package and actually use it. I think he spent about as much for it as the winning bidder of this listing.