A Slice of Silicon Valley History: Steve Jobs' $175 Apple Check Fetches $2.4 Million at Auction
A piece of paper that helped launch a tech empire has sold for a fortune. A check for $175, dated July 3, 1976, and signed by Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak along with early partner Ronald Wayne, was auctioned for $2.4 million by RR Auction—far exceeding pre-sale estimates. The check was made out to Crampton, Remke & Miller, an electronics parts supplier crucial to building Apple's first computers.
The sale was part of a larger auction of early Apple artifacts that collectively brought in over $8 million. An Apple-1 prototype board led the pack at $2.85 million, with the Jobs-signed check coming in as the second-highest lot. Analysts say these prices underscore a booming market for physical memorabilia tied to the origin stories of iconic companies, offering a tangible connection to a now-mythologized era of innovation.
The contrast between the check's face value and Apple's present-day stature is profound. From a garage startup settling a $175 parts bill, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has grown into the world's most valuable publicly traded company with a market capitalization of $3.81 trillion. The company recently reported record quarterly revenue of $143.8 billion, driven by $85.27 billion in iPhone sales and a rapidly growing Services segment that hit $30.01 billion.
"This isn't just about a check; it's about capturing the moment before the explosion," said David Chen, a tech historian at Stanford University. "For collectors, owning this is like holding the blueprint for a revolution. It represents the raw, unfiltered beginning of the personal computing age."
However, not everyone views the sale with pure nostalgia. Marcus Thorne, a financial analyst and vocal critic of tech idolatry, offered a sharper take: "Spending $2.4 million on a piece of paper is a spectacular display of wealth fetishism. It tells you more about speculative mania and inequality than it does about innovation. That money could fund actual startups, not just worship dead ones."
Meanwhile, Eleanor Vance, a veteran collector of tech memorabilia, saw it differently. "As artifacts from this period become rarer, their cultural and historical significance only grows. This check is a direct financial artifact from the creation of Apple I. For serious collectors, that provenance is priceless."
The auction result coincides with a strong financial performance for Apple, which maintains 2.5 billion active devices worldwide and returned $32 billion to shareholders last quarter. Wall Street firms like JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley maintain bullish price targets, citing resilient demand. The journey from a $175 expense to a multi-trillion-dollar empire continues to captivate investors and historians alike, explaining why the physical documents of that journey command such astronomical prices.