Apple Founding Documents for Auction; $100K+ Expected
A piece of Silicon Valley history.
We've seen some classic Apple machines auctioned online and fetch quite a sum. Next month, another piece of Apple history is on the auction block. Sotheby's in New York will soon auction off the original founding documents of Apple. The documents establishing the Apple Computer Company are signed by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne and are dated April 1, 1976. The pages are expected to sell for between $100,000 and $150,000 at Sotheby's books and manuscripts auction on December 13.
Though you could probably pick either of the two Steves out of a line up with no problems, the third person named in the documents, Ron Wayne, is less recognizable. This is because Wayne, a former co-worker of Jobs at Atari, left Apple 12 days after he signed the papers, cashing out his 10 percent of the company for just $800. In Walter Isaacson's book about the life of Steve Jobs, Wayne is said to have left because while Jobs and Woz had nothing to lose by starting Apple Computer, he had assets that potential creditors could seize should things go wrong. Had he held onto his 10 percent stake in Apple, it would be worth well over $20 billion today.
The documents were apparently acquired from a manuscript dealer that obtained them from Wayne. They include the original contract as well as the amendment that saw Wayne withdraw as partner.

I would pay up to $50 to have these just so I can take them to an Apple store and pee all over them in front of all the apple fanboys and revel in their tears of sadness.
Whoever is buying them i assume bought an apple products in the past so it makes sense.
I'm sure the founding documents for Edsel are worth some money too.
I would pay up to $50 to have these just so I can take them to an Apple store and pee all over them in front of all the apple fanboys and revel in their tears of sadness.
$800 to the creditors I imagine, and if the creditors held onto it, what a win.
It's really tragic.
One doesn't need to like Apple to see the historical value of these papers, Apple is one of the most successful companies in the modern computer era and will go down in history with giants like IBM, Microsoft, Sony and others. And Apple using their own business methods surely managed to take the world going their own way instead of doing what everyone else did before.
If you can't at least see the historical value of these papers then you're plain dumb. The monetary value of these papers can of course be questioned, but as always in an auction the one that pays the highest wins, regardless if it's a TV, piece of papers, old painting or a rare bolt. Simple as that.
And I bet similar papers for IBM or Microsoft would fetch a similar sum of money if not more if they would ever surface and end up in an action.
To all you sickly Apple haters, grow up... If you don't like Apple then stay away from these topics and don't infect the forums and sites with your pointless trolling and hate. Doesn't do anyone good.
As for Wayne he had a lot to lose, and who knew back then that Apple would become as successful as it is today. It's always easy to ridicule and laugh at him today when we got history as evidence, not as easy when the future isn't written and you got a lot of personal stuff at risk, remember that a lot more companies crash and burn than become successful. And this happened in the very infancy of personal computing, so it was a brand new market and development.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/12/19/us-magnacarta-auction-idUSN1854840520071219