Steve Jobs’ Early Apple Collection Up for Auction
To celebrate Apple’s 50th anniversary, a special auction featuring a selection of Steve Jobs’ earliest Apple products and personal items has been launched. The Boston-based RR Auction is now open for bids on 191 unique items, including vintage Apple computers, important documents from the company’s early days, and a collection of Jobs’ childhood belongings, such as bowties and Bob Dylan 8-track tapes. The auction began on Tuesday.
One of the most significant pieces in the auction is a historic check issued by Apple Computer, Inc. on March 16, 1976, just 16 days before the company was officially founded. This check, signed by Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak, is a $500 note made out to Howard Cantin, who designed the printed circuit board for the Apple-1 computer. According to RR Auction, this check is the first financial document drawn from Apple’s original account and played a key role in launching the personal computing revolution.
Within just 24 hours of the auction opening, the check attracted a bid of $32,000, but the auction house anticipates that its final selling price could soar to $500,000 or more. Another highly sought-after item, the earliest prototype motherboard for the Apple-1, received the highest bid of $55,000, with experts predicting it may eventually sell for at least half a million dollars.
In addition to these rare items, the auction features other early Apple products, including a working Lisa-1 computer—a retro model that came before the Macintosh—and a first-generation iPhone that was famously jailbroken by young hacker Geohot.
Many of the childhood items were donated to RR Auction by Jobs’ stepbrother, John Chovanec. Among these artifacts are Jobs’ wooden bedroom desk from the Los Altos house, where he and Wozniak built the first Apple computers, a heat sink and ribbon cable from his personal Apple-1, handwritten car repair manuals, and even a short note to his father on an old Apple business card. Additionally, the auction showcases Apple marketing posters dating back to the 70s and 80s.
Bidding for this remarkable collection will remain open until January 29.
