An original Pac-Man arcade machine. Astronaut space suits. Vintage computers that take up entire rooms. And a letter from Albert Einstein that is considered one of the most important pieces of correspondence of the 20th century. These are some of the latest treasures to be auctioned from the estate of the late Paul Allen.
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“Never before has the market seen a collection of this diversity that so beautifully documents the history of human science and technological ingenuity – let alone one assembled by a founding father of modern computing,” said Marc Porter, chairman of Christie’s America, in a statement. “It is a testament to the uniqueness and importance of these objects that one of the greatest innovators of our time collected, conserved and, in dozens of cases, restored them, while both drawing his own inspiration from them and sharing many of them publicly.”
Three separate auctions will present a collection of treasures that Allen amassed over the course of his life: “Firsts: The History of Computing from the Paul G. Allen Collection,” “Over the Horizon: Art of the Future from the Paul G. Allen Collection,” and “Pushing Boundaries: Ingenuity from the Paul G. Allen Collection.”
The auction series is the latest attempt to offload parts of Allen’s vast collection. Although he was widely known as the co-founder of Microsoft, Allen invested much of his success in collecting items of historical significance – art, technology, pop culture and more. He turned part of that collection into the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) and the Living Computers Museum and Labs.
After Allen’s death in 2018, parts of his estate were slowly sold off. The Cinerama cinema in Seattle, which Allen owned, closed in 2020 and was eventually sold to the Seattle International Film Festival in 2023. Christie’s already acquired part of Allen’s private art collection in 2022, which was sold for a total of $1.5 billion.
Seattle residents and the general geek community may recognize many of the current auction items from the Living Computers Museum. The museum opened in 2012 but was closed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and never reopened.
What is being offered in the auction?
“Firsts” and “Over the Horizon” are online auctions that begin on August 23 and run through September 12. “Pushing Boundaries,” on the other hand, is a live auction scheduled for September 10.
Firsts features items that mark significant moments in computing and technology history. For example, there’s a Tate Arithmometer from 1892 (a completely manual calculator). There are computers from large to small, such as an IBM 7090 mainframe from 1959 – a computer that takes up an entire room. Then there’s a collection of microcomputers from the ’70s and ’80s (today we’d call them something like “really big and heavy computers”). There are also coding printouts, early Microsoft company memos, a drone built by Vulcan Technologies and a pair of Puma RS computer shoes from 2018.
“Over the Horizon” is essentially a 19th- and 20th-century science fiction art auction, featuring paintings of space travel and visions of humanity’s technological future—images that would fit in a mid-century science fiction magazine anthology.
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The live auction, “Pushing Boundaries,” is an eclectic mix of the two online auctions — some art, some tech, some history — but features work that is clearly at the higher end of the spectrum. There are astronaut spacesuits from the 1960s, estimated at $10,000 to $150,000. Also selling for $3,000 is an original 1980 Pac-Man arcade machine and a 1975 Atari Pong home console, estimated at $3,000 to $5,000. A 49,000-year-old meteorite could fetch up to $150,000. The 1966 pitch book for “The Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau” is estimated at up to $15,000.
There is also a letter from Albert Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him that the Germans have found a way to extract energy from uranium that could be used to build “extremely powerful bombs.” There are only two versions of this letter, the other being in Roosevelt’s presidential library. The price of the letter is said to be between $4 and $6 million.
