Courtesy RR Auction
Coincidentally, that’s the original partnership agreement between Jobs, Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, signed on April 1, 1976 also ready for bidding This month at Christie’s. (Wayne cooled off soon after the signing and sold his 10 percent stake to Steeves for $800.) It is one of “works of art, furniture and documents that changed American history” offered in a sale called “We the People: America at 250.” Christie’s estimates the partnership document will sell for between $2 million and $4 million.
Items related to early Apple history, especially those involving Jobs, have gone for stratospheric prices in recent years. Jobs was famously reluctant to sign anything, and his signature is considered the most valuable of any public figure. Even a signed business card can cost that much six figures“There’s an emotional connection between Steve Jobs and collectors,” says Bobby Livingston, RR’s executive vice president, “People who start their own Internet or engineering companies love Apple products,” Lonnie Mims, Owner and Founder of Check #2 a technical museum In Roswell, Georgia, there is discussion about the value of such pieces of paper. “You can get anything in the world with Steve Wozniak’s signature, but Jobs is a different story. And having those two together is the highest form of rarity.”
Items issued by Chovanec are in another domain. Some of them appear to belong less to history than to the realm of religious relics. After Paul Jobs’ death, Steve promised that Chovanek’s mother could live in the house “until you drop”. Chovanek says that Jobs notoriously had no interest in anything in his former home apart from a few family photos. When it came to the desk and its contents, he said Jobs had asked him to take it. Chovanek’s mother, Marilyn, lived in the house until her death in 2019. For years the desk and other items were stored in Chovanek’s garage. He had actually worked for Apple since 2005 and did not disclose this to Jobs until he was appointed. During his 16-year tenure at the company, first in the supply chain section and then in the retail group, few knew that he was Jobs’ half-brother. “I felt like it was nobody’s business,” he says. When Chovanek attended Jobs’ memorial service at Stanford in 2011, he says, “Some of the executives looked at me like, ‘What are you? You What are you doing here?
