Apple’s Secret Fake iPod Built to Fool the World Surfaces for Auction

Steve Jobs stood on stage in 2001 and promised a device that held a thousand songs.

Apple hid that device's real shape behind a decoy built to fool everyone in the room.

That decoy just surfaced and collectors are ready to pay a fortune for it.

The Decoy Apple Built to Protect Its Biggest Secret

Apple's Special Projects Group had a problem.

Engineers needed to test the first iPod in the real world.

But the real iPod couldn't be seen by a single outsider before launch day.

So Apple built a fake one.

It's known internally as the P68.

Collectors now call it the "stealth iPod."

The case is oversized and cream-colored.

It's nothing like the sleek device Jobs unveiled a few months later.

That was the entire point.

Engineers could carry the P68 in public and run it through real-world testing without tipping off a reporter, a rival, or a random stranger on the street.

The prototype still carries the scars of that secrecy.

Engineering switches. Barcode labels. Exposed wiring. All still intact.

It survived because one man refused to let it disappear.

Jim Dumont was the fifth engineer hired to Apple's original iPod team, joining the company in 2001.

His career at Apple stretched across several iPod redesigns before he moved onto the iPhone team, the project that would eventually make his old device obsolete.

Dumont held onto the P68 for decades.

He's also preserved an archive of internal Apple development material from those years.

That paper trail now goes to auction alongside the prototype itself.

Collectors Are Already Fighting Over Apple's Past

The stealth iPod isn't going up for sale alone.

It's part of RR Auction's "Steve Jobs & the Computer Revolution: The Apple 50th Anniversary Auction Part Two," running through August 20.

RR Auction expects the P68 to fetch somewhere around $50,000.

That's not a wild guess.

The same auction house just closed Part One of this sale in January, and the results should make every collector in America pay attention.

An Apple check signed by Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 sold for $2,409,886.

An early Apple-1 prototype board went for $2,750,000.

Jobs's personal 1977 Apple poster brought in $659,900.

A set of Jobs's old bow ties sold for $113,580.

A wooden case he kept from the Byte Shop went for $254,375.

That's real money for a set of bow ties nobody thought twice about until last year.

Part Two is stacked the same way.

A working 1977 Apple-1, restored and still functional inside its old Smith-Corona typewriter case, carries an estimate north of $300,000.

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A factory-sealed first-generation iPhone is expected to bring in roughly $50,000, the same range as the fake iPod sitting next to it in the catalog.

A business card signed by Jobs and graded a perfect PSA GEM MT 10 could top $60,000.

An early Apple II with a rare Rev. 0 logic board and a functional Lisa-1 with its original "Twiggy" drives round out the sale.

A machine built to be invisible is now worth as much as an actual working computer from the company's founding decade, and that's the joke buried inside this whole auction.

Twenty-five years of being forgettable just turned into a $50,000 payday.

Apple still runs its product launches the exact same way today.

New iPhones get wrapped in black cases and fake software months before release.

Employees sign away their firstborn in NDAs to protect a phone that will be public knowledge in ninety days.

Somewhere out there is a box of engineering castoffs from this year's iPhone sitting in a drawer.

Whoever kept it just found their retirement fund.

Sources:

• Talker/SWNS via New York Post, "Rare 'stealth iPod' prototype somehow survived – and could fetch $50K at auction," New York Post, July 30, 2026.
• Lucia Auerbach, "A Working Apple-1 From the 1970s Is Expected to Fetch $300,000. The Real Treasure May Be 5 Faded Storefront Photos," Inc., July 2026.
• AppleInsider Staff, "This Apple-1 Auction Expected to Cost the Winner as Much as 275 iPhone 17 Pros," AppleInsider, July 24, 2026.
• Business Wire, "Steve Jobs-Signed Apple Check No. 1 Sells for $2.4 Million at RR Auction," Yahoo Finance, February 2, 2026.
• CBS News Staff, "Steve Jobs' Childhood Belongings, Early Apple Products Up for Auction to Mark Company's 50th Anniversary," CBS News, January 2026.