Apple II Bits

Two years ago, Christie’s of London auctioned an Apple-1 for $213,600 USD. Although that amount has since been bested by Sotheby’s, the Christie’s auction is still an interesting tale — and one that isn’t over. What happened to that machine after Marco Boglione purchased it? Did it ever become the centerpiece of a museum exhibit, as he intended?

According to Federico Viticci, it has, if only temporarily. Viticci writes at MacStories.net:

I live in Viterbo, a small town in Lazio, Italy, not too far away from Rome… Today, the medieval buildings that make Viterbo an evocative architectural tapestry of art and history became, for a moment, a gallery for the modern history of technology.

Thanks to the efforts of Medioera, a festival of "digital culture" at its third annual edition here in Viterbo, Marco Boglione’s original Apple I gained a prominent spot in the gorgeous Piazza del Gesù…

The Apple I exhibited at Medioera is the same that was auctioned (and sold) at Christie’s in November 2010.

Viticci goes on to quote me (which would be a bit too meta to quote here) before offering an extensive history of the ownership of this particular Apple-1 — a lineage I’ve not seen published elsewhere — and photos of this and other machines that were a part of the festival.

Medioera is a temporary exhibit that has since left Viterbo. Where will Boglione’s Apple-1 appear next? … Maybe Russia?

When an Apple-1 sold for $213,600 almost a year ago, it was a business expense: the new owner, Marco Boglione, intends to feature it in a computer museum in his hometown of Turin, Italy. Reported one media outlet:

Turin, a northern Italian city, already has a television museum, a radio museum and a museum of cinema. Computers, and aesthetically-driven Apple in particular, would be a good fit in fashion-conscious Turin.

“It’s big money,” says Boglione, who says that he “couldn’t care less whether tomorrow a machine like this goes for more or less. I think it’s good in Italy that there is such a historical piece, one of the best, in good condition.”

Now it looks like there’s another computer history museum in the making. The BBC UK reports that Andrei Antonov is assembling Apple’s lineage with which to found a museum in Moscow, Russia, by the end of 2011. The gallery will include the portable Apple II (the IIc), the Bandai Pippin, and other rare and aging artifacts.

Is a museum dedicated to Apple products too focused, compared to the comprehensiveness of the Computer History Museum? Does it need to reach further back in its focus, as the Vintage Computer Festival does? Or, like the recent rebranding of Macworld Expo, does an Apple museum capitalize on a brand that invokes passion and dedication like none other?

UPDATE (29-Feb-12): Here’s the latest on the Russian museum.