We’ve seen a couple of rare Apple Computer Company checks from the 70s go up for sale this year. Now an interesting one is up for grabs – a Steve Jobs-signed check to then electronics leader RadioShack. Fascinatingly, this check has a connection to the origin story of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak’s first partnership before Apple.
Update 12/7: The auction has ended with the check going for $46,063. While that’s $21,000 above the “$25,000+” estimate, it’s far below the similar Apple check that netted $106,985 in May.
This past summer, we saw Apple’s second check ever written sell at auction for a whopping $135,261. While this latest check that’s up for grabs isn’t quite as rare, with it being check #195, it’s unique as it is made out to RadioShack.
Here’s how RadioShack played a role in the creation of Apple:
A fascinating check related to one of the great unsung heroes of the early computer boom: RadioShack. The biggest tech innovations of the 20th century are all, in varying degrees, indebted to the Boston-based electronics store. 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.
RR Auction says the check is in “very fine condition” and estimates it will go for over $25,000.
Exceptional Apple Computer Company check, 6 x 3, filled out and signed by Jobs, “Steven Jobs,” payable to Radio Shack for $4.01, July 23, 1976. Headed “Apple Computer Company,” the check uses Apple’s first official address at “770 Welch Rd., Ste. 154, Palo Alto”—the location of an answering service and mail drop that they used while still operating out of the famous Jobs family garage. In very fine condition.
Bidding is currently open for this Apple Steve Jobs signed check and will close on December 6. At the time of writing, the current bid is at $22,444.
Notably, a similar check dated within a few weeks of this one went for just over $100,000 in May this year.
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