Wealthy techies are already lining up to check out an international auction site featuring two relics from the creators of Apple, the biggest company in the world.
Maryland-based Alexander Historical Auctions is featuring the first Apple Computers Inc. sign created by co-founder Steve Jobs and the simple computer toolbox used by partner Steve Wozniak in the January online auction.
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“Offered here is nothing less than a true icon of American industry, the very first sign used by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to promote their fledgling start-up, Apple Computer Company. This sign was displayed at the first trade shows Apple attended in 1976, and it remained in service for years outside the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.,” said the auction house famous for selling historical relics and artifacts.
Alexander President Bill Panagopulos called Wozniak’s metal box, a small tackle-style unit with the co-founder’s name on it, “the tool box that built Apple computer!”
The toolbox has a starting bid requirement of $10,000. The opening bid for the sign is $50,000.
The sale will take place from Jan. 25 to Jan. 27.
But those numbers could prove to be chump change in the wealthy tech world, especially considering their ties to Jobs and Wozniak.
Panagopulos noted, for example, that Jobs’s Birkenstock sandals recently sold for $218,750 at auction. And he considers the Apple sign “one of the most important American industrial relics ever offered, worthy of museum display.”
What’s more, Panagopulos was one of several past buyers of the sign and has charted its price increase along with the value of Apple. He detailed the history and noted that the sign was in an Apple museum in Italy after hanging in front of Apple’s headquarters for years.
Included with the sign is a photo of Jobs standing in front of it at a trade show in the mid-1970s, when the first Apple computers were sold.
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Wozniak’s toolbox was also shown at the All About Apple Museum in Savona, Italy, the only Apple-authorized museum in the world. It has on it the original 4-inch long yellow Dymo self-adhesive label bearing Wozniak’s name.
According to the write-up for the sale, “This relic of the days of the Apple I bears multiple signs of heavy use: the exterior, interior and tray bear accumulations of dirt and grease, as does the label, scratches within are consistent with the box having carried tools for quite some time, and the bottom of the box shows much wear from having slid about a rough surface.”
