Do YOU have an old Apple gadget that’s worth a fortune? How rare Mac computers, collectable iPhones and 30-year-old cameras are now selling for hundreds of thousands of pounds

New Apple iPhones, Macs and Watches do not come cheap.

They are released to much fanfare and sell for anywhere from around £250 to more than £7,000 — but that still pales in comparison to what some older models are going for.

Despite the first generation iPhone only being released 16 years ago, rare early models have been fetching up to $190,000 (£145,000) because they’re already seen as collectors’ items.

Last week an unopened 4GB first edition model, described as ‘exceedingly rare’ and the ‘holy grail’ for collectors, was bought for more than 300 times the $599 (£457) price it was marketed at in 2007.

So what other Apple products have sold for vast amounts? And do you have anything similar in an old drawer or cupboard that could make you a small fortune? MailOnline reveals the sort of thing to look out for.

Steve Jobs’ original ‘Apple Computer A’ prototype

Considered ‘lost’ until fairly recently, the prototype for Apple’s first ever computer sold for an astronomical amount of money last year.

The ‘Apple Computer A’ – hand-soldered by the tech giant’s co-founder Steve Wozniak in 1976 – was bought at auction for $700,000 (£544,000). 

Billed as a ‘rare’ and ‘historic’ item, it is essentially a circuit board covered in chips and wires, embossed with the words ‘Apple Computer A ©76’.

The prototype was the jumping point to the Apple-1 computer, which was released in April 1976, the year that Apple was founded.

‘There is no Apple-1 without this board — it’s the holy grail of Steve Jobs and Apple memorabilia,’ RR Auction executive vice president Bobby Livingston told AP last year. 

Prior to being sold at auction, the previous owner kept it for 30 years after being gifted the computer by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Rare fully-functional Apple-1 computer 

The Apple-1 computer was the first product to be developed under the Apple name.

A number have been sold at auction, including a rare, fully-functional model which sold for almost $460,000 (£358,000) when it went under the hammer in Boston in 2020.

This particular machine was acquired by western Michigan computer store SoftWarehouse in the 1980s, as part of trade for a newer IBM machine, and later displayed in store in a custom display case before eventually ending up in storage.

The unit was restored in 2019 by Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen and exhibited at the Vintage Computer Festival West in California that year.

Mac prototype with 5.25-inch ‘Twiggy’ disk drive 

One of only two surviving prototypes of the original Apple Macintosh computer sold for $150,000 (£116,000) when it went under the hammer in 2019.

The prototype, which was made in 1983, featured the aborted 5.25-inch ‘Twiggy’ disk drive.

The Macintosh began as a personal project of inventor Jef Raskin before Jobs took it over. 

Originally, the plan was to use a 5.25-inch drive to greatly expand the capacity of standard floppy discs.

But they proved unreliable, so a 3.5 inch drive, which was more robust and small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, was chosen instead for mass production.

Jobs reportedly had all the existing ‘Twiggy’ prototypes destroyed after the launch of the Mac a year later, but two are known to remain.

Ultra-rare 1988 ‘WristMac’

The ‘WristMac’ was not technically an Apple product, but it did connect to a Macintosh computer via the now-discontinued ‘AppleTalk’ protocol.

The device could also set alarms, store telephone numbers and take notes. 

It was made by Seiko and released in 1988, decades before the tech giant unveiled its first Apple Watch in 2015.

When astronauts aboard the Atlantis Space Shuttle sent the first email from space on August 28, 1991, they wore WristMac watches to coordinate with the Macintosh Portable and Apple Link software aboard the shuttle.

A rare, never-worn WristMac in its original packaging went up for auction in 2021 and ended up selling for $7,500 (£5,800). 

Not quite hitting the heights of some of the other Apple products listed here, but still a tidy sum for a watch. 

First edition 4GB iPhone

Last week a two-decade-old iPhone considered to be the ‘Holy Grail’ by Apple collectors sold at auction for a record $190,000 (£145,000).

The unopened 4GB first edition model, described as ‘exceedingly rare’, was bought for more than 300 times the $599 (£457) price it was marketed at in 2007.

It is likely to remain sealed because otherwise its value would plummet dramatically.

The phone has less storage than an Apple Watch and a 3.5-inch screen compared to 6.1 inches on the latest model, the iPhone 14 Pro.

It was first released 16 years ago by then Apple CEO Jobs. However, the 4GB model was discontinued just two months later because of poor sales.

VideoPad prototype scrapped by Jobs

This nifty little device was a rare prototype of the Apple VideoPad 2.

The plastic personal digital assistant mock-up – the only one of its kind known to have survived – shows how Apple once envisaged cornering the video call market.  

Three VideoPad concepts were developed by the California-based firm from 1993–1995 based on outline sketches drawn up by Apple’s former CEO, John Sculley.

Unlike the VideoPad 1 and 3, the second design, which sports a folding screen (pictured above) and camera for video conferencing, was never officially shown to the public. 

The VideoPad 2 prototype in question ended up selling for $14,000 (£10,900) at an auction in Los Angeles in 2021.

According to the auction house Bonham’s, the prototype was originally purchased from an Apple Engineer in Palo Alto, California, back in 1995. 

QuickTake 100 camera from 1994

This one didn’t fetch anywhere close to some of the other Apple products above.

But the 1994 QuickTake 100 camera did still sell for $260 (£202).

Described as ‘one of the first commercially successful digital camera lines’, it had a maximum resolution of 640×480 pixels — significantly less than the 48million pixel camera on a modern iPhone 14 Pro.