Apple auctions

How much would you pay for a check signed by both Apple co-founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak? Factor in that it is Apple check No. 1. Got a figure in mind? Now double it. Your guess is probably still less than a collector paid for that item in a recent auction.
It went for a stonking $2.4 million — believed to be the highest price ever paid for a signed check at public auction.

How would you like to own a ribbon cable once owned by Steve Jobs? Or how about a heat sink? What about his boyhood collection of bow ties?

These are just three of about 200 items associated with the Apple co-founder currently being auctioned online to celebrate Apple’s 50th anniversary.

Entitled “Steve Jobs & the Computer Revolution: The Apple 50th Anniversary Auction,” the collection of weird auction stuff is more interesting than usual. It provides a glimpse inside Jobs’ childhood home and the legendary Silicon Valley garage where Apple was born. There’s also Apple’s very first check, expected to go for a cool half million.

This week someone paid about $1,000 on eBay for an allegedly fake Apple employee badge masquerading as the 1977 ID of employee number 10.

The employee badge is a convincing phony, according the an intrepid blogger and the longtime Apple employee (number 8) he contacted to confirm the forgery. And the proof of provenance the blogger sought from the seller appeard to be fake, too, according to several sources.

Back in 1976, when Apple still operated out of cofounder Steve Jobs’ garage, he signed a $175 check to a consulting firm. And someone just paid $106,985 for it, Boston-based RR Auction said Thursday.

That’s one pricey piece of paper. And another one, a Jobs business card from NeXT, brought in a more affordable $3,076. Both sums far exceeded the auction estimates.

A check that Steve Jobs signed in the earliest days of Apple is up for auction. The Apple co-founder sent the check to a consulting firm way back in 1976, when the upstart computer company still operated out of Jobs’ garage.

Also up for auction: a Steve Jobs business card from when he ran NeXT in the early 1990s.

Last week we asked if you were lucky enough to have about $65,000 to spend on an iPhone that can’t connect to anything. Now we know you didn’t need that much money after all.

The original, sealed iPhone (1st generation) that went up for auction Thursday sported a rare “Lucky you” sticker on the box. But that wasn’t enough to vault the handset into the record books ($63,356). Bidding started at $32,000.

Update: And … bidding ended at $40,320, the low end of the projected range of $40,000 – $60,000. Too many old iPhones up for auction lately? Maybe.

A restored Apple-1 in good working order might see a winning bid of $485,000 in an upcoming auction. That’s not just because the antique computer is nearly all original and actually works. It’s also because Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak signed it.

Have $499,000 to spare and looking to show off your Apple fandom credentials? A replica of the Apple-sponsored 1979 Porsche 935 K3 race car, which once raced at Le Mans, has shown up for sale online.

Apple sponsored the original car, operated by racing team Dick Barbour Racing, in 1980, only a few years into Apple’s history. That vehicle, which features the Apple Computer name and rainbow colors, is now part of radio host and podcaster Adam Corolla’s extensive car collection. While the model for sale here is just a replica, it’s still a pretty stunning collector’s piece — as suggested by the sizable asking price.

Apple’s retail origins were far less glossy than today’s glass shrines known as Apple Stores. If a dealer wanted to sell an Apple II in 1978, the fledgling computer company provided a 4-foot-by-5-foot acrylic sign in a metal frame. On the face was a rainbow Apple logo over the words “apple computer.” No capital letters.

Bidding on one of those original signs starts at $20,000 in an online auction that ends in three days.

A rare piece of Apple memorabilia goes up for sale in March. A pair of Apple sneakers from the 1990s will be auctioned off to someone who wants to remember a troubled time in the company’s history.

Rare Apple computers made in the 1970s sell for amazing sums, but a bit of company memorabilia is up for auction at a price an average Mac fan might be able to afford. Which isn’t to say that a 3.5-inch disk signed by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is expected to go for cheap.

A prototype Apple Macintosh used in the development of MacWrite can be yours, if you can scratch up about $180,000. It’s almost unique because of a disk drive different from the one used when this revolutionary  computer shipped.

Bidding was apparently hot and heavy for a computer manual for the Apple-1, this company’s very first computer. In a multi-day online auction for this rare bit of tech history, the top bid was under $10,000 only a few days ago but in the end the document sold for $12,956.

Want to show your Apple-loving significant other that you really care about them? If so — and you happen to have $150,000-$250,000 at your disposal — you might want to participate in a new Sotheby’s auction for a diamond ring designed by none other than Sir Jony Ive and BFF Marc Newson.

The one-of-a-kind ring was designed to raise money for (RED), a charity that raises money to fight HIV and AIDS in Africa. Over the years, Apple has raised millions of dollars for the charity — and Ive has had the chance to design one-off objects such as minimalist desks in the process.