If you're a science and tech history geek with mad stacks waiting to be spent, you've come to the right place. If you fit that description minus the mad stacks, start buying lottery tickets, because the upcoming History of Science auction at Bonhams New York is full of stuff you want.
The 288-lot lineup hits the block Oct. 22. It's full of super-rare, super-awesome things like a 1,500-pound, 6-inch-thick heavily leaded window that Manhattan Project scientists peered through to watch plutonium production. It's expected to go between $150,000 and $250,000. Or maybe you'd prefer an Apple-1 motherboard built by Steve Wozniak in Steve Jobs' garage. It works, which helps explain why it's expected to command something in the neighborhood of $300,000 to $500,000.
The item I most covet is the Helmholz Sound Synthesizer from 1905, which is apparently one of the oldest, if not the oldest, electric keyboards. It looks like a combination sewing machine--torture device, and is perhaps the biggest and best one of these contraptions still in existence. It could fetch as much as $30,000. Another favorite is a first edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, but with a projected price of $25,000 to $35,000, it's beyond my means.
If you'd like a piece of WIRED history, bid on the oil portrait of Bill Gates created for the November 2000 cover of the magazine. It's a relative bargain at $700 to $900.
Also on the more modestly priced end of the spectrum, you'll find lots of great old books and documents and a whole bunch of beautiful old globes, some that might go for as little as $1,000.
