Apple has always been on the high-end of prices for computer hardware, although in the 90s it was a lot different than today. Apple's market wasn't really normal, every-day people and homes, their target were mainly businesses like desktop publishing, graphic design, CAD, video editing, etc, which required borderline specialist hardware in the 80s and 90s. There was still a massive divide between the Macintosh's architecture and x86 PCs, and there were very distinct differences in the capabilities of which computer you bought back then, not just the build quality and interface you get nowadays.
Anyways, I'm basing this list off this screencap of the Unsolved Mysteries episode featuring this case, shown in the linked video:
All of the products and pricings are sourced from various 1992 MacWorld magazines and misc Apple dealer catalogs.
Base system:
Quadra 950 8/SuperDrive -
$6539
Reported: 4GB Hard Drive
Found: 3.5GB Seagate Elite-III -
$4439 (cannot find a Macintosh-compatible 4GB drive from '92)
Reported: 30MB memory
Standard 8mb, though the Quadra only recognizes RAM in sets of four, so I'll assume they stripped the factory RAM and replaced it with 8x4mb 80ns @$120/pc adding up to 32MB because my brain can't figure out the configuration needed for 30mb with off-the-shelf SIMMs.
Found: 8x4mb 80ns @$120/pc -
$960
Reported: 125MB optical drive and disks (wtf?)
I believe this is referring to 128MB Magneto-Optical drives and disks, somewhat common in the higher-end market at the time.
Found: Optical 128S (Sony) -
$1499
Cartridges are $59 each, lets just say he has 5 of them.
$295
Reported: 24" super high res color monitor
Ok, so I cannot find any source for even the existence of a 24" monitor for Macintosh systems in or before 1992. Largest I can find are 21", and even those are rare (half even being monochrome), as most seem to max out at 20". So for the sake of argument,
RasterOps 21" Color Hitachi -
$2795
You'll also need a video accelerator card for such a large display, so from the same ad:
RasterOps PaintBoard 24 (24-bit accelerator for 13-21") -
$1539
and fuck it, if they're throwing this sort of dosh at a Mac, why not go for the nicer keyboard too, eh?
Apple Extended Keyboard -
$170
All totaled up, if bought brand new, you'd be looking at
$18,901
A far cry from their asking price of $24,000, though there is a very high chance there were more upgrades in the machine than what was listed. Still really steep when you consider this system was used, while the prices I cited were for new parts.
The victims also had another listing for a video editing system that accompanied the Quadra, though they were selling it separately. Together that would definitely push the hardware over $30,000.
