In the June 1977
issue of BYTE
magazine I saw an advertisement stating you could order an Apple II and it had a price list. One of the columns was titled "Apple II Board-only". The price for that column was significantly less than the "Apple II System" column.
It was my understanding the Apple II never came in kit form (unlike its predecessor the Apple I).
So, my assumption is that you could have bought just the motherboard (fully populated) and you supply the case. Is this correct or could you also buy the empty board and solder the chips in yourself like you could with the Apple I?
I feel that even a populated board that you had to mount in a case with a PSU could be considered a "kit".
Thanks.
EDIT
I wanted to mention that the ad I saw appears to be from Apple. Further down the page (this is from a PDF I saw) the address you send the money to was Apple. It does appear that you could buy the board with memory populated. I'm assuming the rest of the board would also be populated. So maybe I answered my own question. Perhaps they didn't consider it a kit. More of a replacement motherboard.