In a Tuesday announcement, the Christie's auction house in London revealed that, at a forthcoming October sale, it is auctioning off a rare Apple 1 computer, which will likely fetch a price of up to £80,000 (approximately $127,000).

Set to hit the auction block on October 9, the original Apple 1 computer - one of the first computers to be designed and hand-built by Apple's co-founders Steve Wozniak and late Steve Jobs - comes from the estate of Joe Copson, an ex-employee of Apple.

The Apple 1 computer to be auctioned by Christie's bears the serial number 22; and happens to be one of the 200 Apple 1 units launched in 1976 in Palo Alto, California; after Wozniak and Jobs convinced Paul Terrell to sell the devices in his computer-store chain called Byte Shop.

According to a statement by Christie's, Wozniak and Jobs "famously invested all they could to finance the first Apple creation"; with Terrell ordering 50 units of Apple 1 motherboards at $500 apiece, on the condition that the creators delivered them pre-assembled instead of as DIY kits.

Noting that the soon-to-be-auctioned Apple 1 computer was originally priced at a rather puckish cost of $666.66, and "boasts" merely 8K of memory, James Hyslop - scientific specialist at Christie's - said that the computer was one of the first computers that set the ball rolling for Apple, which is "now recognized as the most valuable company in the world," and has played a pivotal role in making "computer technology accessible for all."