A Steve Jobs signed Apple Computer business card has achieved an astonishing $181,183 at auction. Boston-based RR Auctions sold this "highly coveted" computer history artifact listed as an "extremely rare, perfectly graded Steve Jobs-signed Apple Computer business card from circa 1983." Pondering over other closed RR Auctions, we can see that Jobs' signature boosted the sale price of this lot significantly, as a very similar non-signed auction sample was a comparative bargain at $12,905.
In the above pictures, you can see that the $181K business card is far from perfect. It seems to have discolored unevenly and the listing admits that the item has "a faint stain on the front from an old tape stain on the back." However, the edges and corners still look sharp, and a 40-year-old card could easily show many more varied signs of aging.
Importantly, the provenance of this card is backed by the U.S. Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA). The encapsulation ticket reveals that the Steve Jobs card is "PSA/DNA Certified," and it is graded as a "GEM MT 10." RR Auctions also boasts that this sample is one of only five known to have successfully passed PSA/DNA authentication. Moreover, the signature is neatly placed and eminently readable.
At the time this business card was issued to Jobs he was acting as Apple Computer Chairman on the Board of Directors. He had recently headhunted John Sculley (from Pepsi-Cola) to serve as Apple's CEO, but this was the pre-Apple Macintosh era, with the Apple Lisa being the firm's main personal computer offering. The first Mac arrived with the sensational 1984 Super Bowl ad in early 1984.
In May 1985, after some management wrangling, Jobs was sidelined and ended up with no operational duties, just the board title. He left to begin his NeXT years, and founded Pixar, and it was over a decade until he returned to Apple as CEO. Several iconic Apple products would launch in the following years, with the dawn of the iDevices. Sadly, Mr Jobs died in 2011, at just 56 years old, and was succeeded by current Apple CEO, Tim Cook.
We've previously covered news of ancient Apple artifacts and memorabilia being auctioned. For example, the Apple founding documents were auctioned back in 2011. Hardware auctions are more to our taste, though, and it was exciting to see the Steve Wozniak assembled, hand soldered, Apple-1 Prototype owned by Steve Jobs go up for auction in 2022. This iconic hardware (pictured above) was guided for half a million dollars, but realized $677,196, despite having a large chunk of PCB missing (among some other issues).
