A live auction of items from the collection of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen took place on Tuesday, reeling in more than $10 million. The auction, held by Christie’s of New York, featured a total of 36 items. Highlights of the sale included a 1939 letter from Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt, which sold for $3.9 million, and a Cray-1 supercomputer that sold for just over $1 million. An early Apple-1 personal computer also fetched $945,000, and a lunch menu from the Titanic sold for $340,000, far above its pre-sale estimate of $50,000.
In addition to the live auction, more than 100 other items from Allen’s collection are currently up for bid in two online sales that end on Thursday. The items include rare computing artifacts, space-related objects, documents, letters, and more. The proceeds from all sales will go to charitable causes, in accordance with Allen’s wishes. Since his death in 2018, numerous items and properties from his collection have been sold.
Christie’s described the items in Tuesday’s sale as telling “the story of science and technology from pre-history to the present day.” The lot reflected Allen’s personal passions and served as a testament to the rapid pace of technological innovation. Noteworthy computer-related artifacts beyond the Cray supercomputer and Apple-1 included a MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer, a Xerox Alto II XM computer, a CDC DD60A console, and an IBM System 360 Model 91 control console, all of which sold for varying prices.
Key items and prices from the sale included a signed letter from Albert Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a first-class luncheon menu from the Titanic, an archive related to primatology featuring letters from prominent scientists, the original pitchbook for the television documentary series “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau,” an abstract sculpture by Antony Gormley, a four-rotor Enigma Machine from 1941, and a Pac-Man Arcade game from 1980. The sale also featured an Apple-1 computer that originally sat in Steve Job’s office, which sold for $945,000.
Allen’s estate, led by his sister Jody Allen, has been divesting a variety of his projects and investments since his death in 2018. This includes the sale of assets such as Seattle’s Cinerama movie theater, the Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum, Vulcan Productions, Stratolaunch, the superyacht Octopus, and other investments. Christie’s previously worked with Allen’s estate for an auction of 155 pieces from Allen’s art collection in November 2022, which was the world’s most successful single-owner fine art auction ever, raising a record $1.62 billion.
