Above: Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs. (courtesy photo)
Rare autographs by creator of Apple
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, inventor and industrial designer. He was the chairman, CEO and a co-founder of Apple Inc., CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar, a member of The Walt Disney Company’s board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar, and the founder, chairman and CEO of NeXT.
Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 and are widely recognized as pioneers of the microcomputer revolution, beginning with Wozniak’s Apple I, then the Apple II and the breakthrough Macintosh in 1984, which ushered in the desktop publishing industry.
Creating NeXT, Jobs helped develop the visual effects industry when he funded Pixar, the computer graphics division of George Lucas’s Lucasfilm, in 1986. Apple merged with NeXT in 1997, and Jobs became CEO of his former company within a few months. He revived Apple, which had been at the verge of bankruptcy. In 1997, with the “Think different” advertising campaign Jobs lead a cultural revolution with the iMac, iTunes, iTunes Store, Apple Store, iPod, iPhone, App Store, and the iPad.
The impact Steve Jobs and his inventions have had on modern society and business cannot be overstated. He was a true visionary and inspired leader.
Jobs was notoriously reticent about giving out his autograph, so items bearing it are hard to come by. After our success last year selling a rare signed Newsweek cover, our Pop Culture auction (March 8-15) will feature three new highly sought items that include Steve Jobs signatures:
Steve Jobs signed questionnaire (above)
sold for $174,757.
Incredible job application questionnaire filled out in 1973 and signed by 18-yr-old Steve Jobs, just months before he dropped out of college, and only a few years before meeting Wozniak. At the bottom, he describes his ‘Special Abilities’ as “electronics tech or design engineer. digital.—from Bay near Hewitt-Packard [sic].”
Steve Jobs signed newspaper clipping (above)
sold for $26,950.
Newspaper clipping, 2008, featuring an image of Jobs speaking at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference for the introduction of the iPhone 3G, with the headline, “New, faster iPhone will sell for $199,” signed by Jobs and by the senior vice president of Apple’s iPod division, Tony Fadell.
Steve Jobs signed Apple Mac OS X Manual (above) sold for $41,806.
Rare Apple Mac OS X Administration Basics spiral-bound manual, signed on the front cover, “All the best, Steve Jobs.” The book is sparsely annotated throughout with training course notes. Obtained by a person getting his training to become an Apple Technician in 2001.