The $7,499 Mac that flopped in style

In 1997 Apple turned twenty. To celebrate, it built the strangest Mac ever sold.

The Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh stood upright like a picture frame. It had a flat screen years before flat screens were normal, leather pads to rest your palms on, and a sound system tuned by Bose. The story goes that early buyers even got it delivered and set up by someone in a suit.

The price: $7,499. That is around $15,000 in today's money, for a computer that was slower than Macs costing a third as much.

Almost nobody bought one. Within about a year, Apple slashed the price to $1,995 just to clear the shelves. The birthday computer became a fire sale.

And then something funny happened. The moment it stopped being a product, it started being a legend. Apple only made around 12,000 of them, so working units are rare. Collectors now pay more for a good one than the original sticker price.

The TAM failed at being a computer and succeeded at being a story. There are worse fates.

The full spec sheet and the collector notes are in the library. If you are one of the lucky few with one on a shelf, add it to your gear. We want to count you.