An old Apple Computer Company check signed by its late co-founder Steve Jobs was sold in an auction for a whopping $46,063. RRAuction conducted the bidding of the old collectible and initially estimated the check to sell for over $25,000.
The check issued by the Wells Fargo Bank was dated July 23, 1976, around three months Apple after was founded, and it was payable to Radio Shack for $4.01. In the address field, it mentions the location of an answering machine and mail drop service which Jobs and Wozniak used at the time when they operated from Jobs’ family garage.
1976 was the same year when Apple released its first product: Apple 1. The computer was initially intended as a kit to be soldered and assembled by the end user. But The Byte Shop owner Paul Terrell offered to buy 50 units of Apple 1, for $500 each, if it was delivered as a finished product.
Radio Shack played a significant role in the duo’s history. The American retail chain was the place where Steve Wozniak purchased the TRS-80 Micro Computer System he used to build the ‘blue box’ that facilitated illegal long-distance calls.
Jobs and Wozniak managed to sell around 200 such boxes for $150 each and the partnership laid the foundation stone of a computer company now known as Apple Inc. The check signed in 1976 may have sold for thousands of dollars in 2023, but it’s still less than half of the selling price of another check Jobs wrote in the same year.
One common thing is both the checks were signed by Jobs as “Steven Jobs.” Nonetheless, it adds to the list of Apple memorabilia which includes a hard to find sealed 4GB original iPhone, an 8GB iPhone 1 that sold for $63,000, and one with a “Lucky You” sticker that managed to sell for $40,320.
The Steve Jobs Archive published a free memoir on the life of the late Apple co-founder earlier this year. It’s a digital e-book that includes Jobs’ past speeches, interviews, emails, some rarely-seen internal meeting transcripts, and childhood photos.
Source: RRAuction