At an online sale in Boston at RR Auction (25% buyer’s premium), 30 Apple and Jobs-related lots, included six signatures, took a premium-inclusive total of $2.9m (25% buyer’s premium) (£2.1m).
Jobs and Steve Wozniak launched Apple from the garage of Jobs’ parents’ home in July 1976 and created their first computer, the Apple-1, the same year.
The top lot of the sale was a 196-page Apple II manual signed by early investor Mike Markkula, the company’s second CEO, and Jobs. The manual had belonged to Julian Brewer, the son of an entrepreneur who worked with Apple to distribute their products in the UK, who asked for it to be signed when he met Jobs and Markkula when they visited his father on a promotional trip to the UK.
It was inscribed Julian, Your generation is the first to grow up with computers. Go change the world! steven jobs, 1980. Guided at $25,000, it was hammered down at $629,987 ($787,484 with premium) to Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts.
A brief typed letter, which included the deadpan line I’m afraid I don’t sign autographs followed by Jobs’ signature, sold at $383,951. It had been consigned by a collector who had bought it as part of a box of autographs many years ago for just a few dollars. RR Auction said the consignor’s “life was changed” after the sale.
Another highlight was a February 1984 issue of Macworld #1 signed on the front cover by Jobs and Wozniak which took at $160,817. A single Jobs business card ($10,324) was bought by the owner of Jukebox, a Canadian company that specialises in business card printing.
