Apple is a trillion dollar company today but it started out with very humble origins. There’s no better evidence than company co-founder Steve Jobs hand writing a check to the electronics store RadioShack for $4.01.
And now that check recently up for auction, and bought in 11,500 times its original value. How ‘s that for appreciation?
$4 Steve Jobs check auctioned off for $46,000
Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple in 1976. In the earliest days of the company, the two worked out of Jobs’ parents’ garage on the Apple-1.
They must have needed some components so Jobs went to RadioShack to buy them. He paid with a check for $4.01. Not $4 million or even $4 thousand. Less than $5.
That check survived until now, and was sold by RR Auction. The estimated pre-action value was $25,000. The auction ended Wednesday, December 6 with the final price at $46,063.
Anything Jobs signed is valuable, and not just because he was a co-founder of Apple and the face of the company for decades. He’s someone who didn’t sign many autographs, so there aren’t huge numbers of pieces of paper floating around with his signature. Another check signed by him recently sold for $107,000.
Radio Shack played a role in launching Apple
RR Auction’s description of the $4 Steve Jobs check includes a section on the importance of the RadioShack to the founding of Apple.
It says:
“Steve Wozniak, who spent hours roaming the aisles of RadioShack as a teenager, saved up enough money to purchase their pioneering TRS-80 Micro Computer System, which he used to build his notorious ‘blue box,’ an illegal device that could make free long-distance phone calls. The ‘blue box’ cemented the first business partnership between Wozniak and Jobs, a duo that managed to make and sell roughly 200 of the boxes for $150 each. Jobs later told his biographer that if it had not been for Wozniak’s blue boxes, ‘there wouldn’t have been an Apple.’ In other words: there wouldn’t have been an Apple if it had not been for RadioShack.”
