Your old computer equipment could be worth up to £500,000 – here’s how to find out if you’re sitting on a goldmine

BRITS could be sitting on a goldmine with old computer equipment potentially worth up to £500,000.

Seemingly outdated gadgets may not be the freshest items on the market but are going for astronomical amounts.

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Many of these are seen as collectors’ items and they could net you a small fortune.

So if you own some old tech you never use, you might have a vintage jackpot tucked away just waiting to be discovered.

The lucky owner of the prototype for Apple’s first ever computer sold it for an eye-watering sum 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, the previous owner kept it for 30 years after being gifted the computer by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

And if you have an Apple-1 computer to your name you could also be in line to net a small fortune.

The vintage 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.

The ever-popular “Mac” computers have old models which are also coveted by collectors.

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.

To make sure you get the best deal for your item, make sure you do your research to see if you could earn more cash elsewhere.

While the 1988 ‘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. 

And one rare never-worn WristMac sold for just under £6,000 on auction in 2021.

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

Meanwhile rare early iPhone models have been fetching up to £145,000 on the market.

Last week the two-decade-old iPhone considered to be the ‘Holy Grail’ by Apple collectors sold at auction.

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

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