Steve Jobs’ 1973 job application fetches $174,000 at auction

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RR Auction

A handwritten job application from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has sold for more than $174,000, according to auction house RR Auction. The company told Reuters that the winning bidder is an Internet entrepreneur from England who doesn’t want to be publicly identified.

The single-page document, dated to 1973, doesn’t identify what job Jobs was applying for. But it provides a window into how Jobs—who would have been 17 or 18 at the time—saw himself.

Jobs identifies himself as an English literature major at Reed College. He officially dropped out of Reed after a single semester in the fall of 1972, but he continued staying with friends on campus and auditing classes in 1973.

Jobs indicated he had experience with both computers and calculators. Under “special abilities,” he wrote “electronics tech or design engineer. digital.” He added, “From Bay near Hewlett-Packard.”

Jobs indicated that he had a driver’s license but didn’t have a phone. Under “access to transportation,” he wrote, “possible, but not probable.”

The year after filling out this application, Jobs found a job at Atari, then a two-year-old startup in the nascent video game business. A couple of years later, in 1976, Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple.

The auction house initially estimated that the letter was worth $50,000, but the bidding quickly escalated past that amount, finally reaching $174,757.

Two other bits of Jobs memorabilia were also sold in the auction. A Mac OS X manual signed by Jobs sold for $41,806, while a newspaper clipping signed by Jobs sold for $26,950.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1277129