AI composite image: RR Auction/ChatGPT/Cult of Mac
How much would you pay for a check signed by both Apple co-founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak? Factor in that it’s Apple check #1. Do you mean the number? Now double that. Your estimate is probably still less than what a collector paid for this item in a recent auction.
It fetched a whopping $2.4 million – believed to be the highest price ever paid for a signed check at public auction.
Apple check #1 sells for a huge amount
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded Apple in 1976. In the early days of the company, both Steves worked from Jobs’ parents’ garage on Apple-1.
They paid Howard Cantin $500 to turn Wozniak’s Apple-1 schematic into a manufacturable printed circuit board design. They used Apple Check #1 dated March 16, 1976 to pay.
It is this check that RR Auction sold on January 29th for a staggering $2,409,886. The auction house thought it could fetch more than $500,000 – and sure enough it did.
By comparison, Apple’s next early check came out to $107,000 in 2023. Later that year, a similar check sold for $46,000. The last auction looks small.
Also consider that no check has apparently ever sold for more than $1 million at public auction. No. But Apple’s No. 1 check went up to $2.4 million.
Apple history on the auction block
“This is the most important financial document in Apple’s history,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of RR Auction. “It captures the first real business transaction between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and the end result shows that collectors recognized its significance above any other Apple material ever released.”
Added value is the fact that Jobs rarely signed memorabilia even when asked. He would simply refuse, which makes examples of his signature all the more rare – and valuable.
Ed Hardy He has been writing about the technique full-time for 25 years and has been using it for much longer. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but he now uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. It is written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthandas well as other sites.
