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.
Apple check No. 1 sells for a huge sum
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded Apple in 1976. In the earliest days of the company, the two Steves worked out of Jobs’ parents’ garage on the 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 No. 1 dated March 16, 1976, for the payment.
It’s this check that RR Auction sold on January 29 for the stunning price of $2,409,886. The auction house thought it might go for more than $500,000 — and it sure did.
For comparison, another early Apple check went for $107,000 in 2023. Later that same year, a similar check sold for $46,000. The latest auction makes those look like pocket change.
Also, consider that apparently no check had ever sold for more than $1 million at public auction. None. But Apple check No. 1 got all the way to $2.4 million.
Apple history on the auction block
“This is the most important financial document in Apple history,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction. “It captures Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak’s first true business transaction, and the final result shows that collectors recognized its significance above any other Apple material ever brought to market.”
Adding to the value is the fact that Jobs rarely signed memorabilia, even when asked. He’d simply refuse, which makes examples of his signature all the more rare — and valuable.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
