From humble beginnings came Apple Incorporated, at least according to a cheque from none other than Steve Jobs that is up for auction. The cheque was written for $US175 (around $245 in current terms) in 1976 — the same year the company was founded — and is now auctioning off for over $US16,000 ($22,200).
The cheque went up for auction on April 17 through RR Auction, with bids closing next week, and the current bid is for a whopping $US16,500. According to RR Auction’s listing, the Wells Fargo cheque also has some Apple easter eggs, including the signature of Steve Jobs — written as “steven jobs” — as well as the address 770 Welch Road in Palo Alto which is a mail drop and answering service that the fledgling company used while operating out of Jobs’ garage. RR Auction estimates that the cheque is worth upwards of $US25,000.
“It’s a remarkable, flawless [cheque] from when Steve Jobs hired Apple’s first consulting firms — a central moment in the history of the most innovative and influential companies,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction, in a statement emailed to Gizmodo.
Jobs’ cheque was written from the Apple Computer Company account to Crampton, Remke & Miller, Incorporated, which was a management consulting firm in Palo Alto, California. Other clients of the consulting firm include Xerox, Atari, and Memorex. The cheque, therefore, is seemingly a lost vestige of Jobs and his co-founders trying to get what is now a tech monolith off the ground.
This is not the only Apple memorabilia that’s gone to auction recently. Earlier this year, an unopened, first-generation iPhone was up for auction from LCG Auctions. The phone belonged to Karen Green who received the phone as a gift from her friends after starting a new job. Green’s iPhone is an 8 gigabyte first-generation iPhone with a camera that originally cost $US599 in 2007, and when the auction closed, the winning bid was a massive $US63,356.40.