Apple founding contract sells for almost $1.6 million at auction

By Trevor Mogg December 13, 2011

The contract that established the Apple Computer Company sold at auction at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday, fetching way more than expected.

It’d been estimated that the company’s founding papers would fetch between $100,000 and $150,000, but thanks to fierce bidding among six interested parties, Lot 241 ended up fetching $1.59 million.

The contract included three typed partnership agreements that were signed in April 1976 by Apple’s three founders – Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne.

Eleven days after the papers were signed, Wayne decided to quit. The auctioned papers include an amendment relating to Wayne’s departure.

The highest bid at the auction came from Eduardo Cisneros, boss of Cisneros Corporation, a firm based in Miami that owns stakes in a number of real estate, TV and telecommunications businesses.

The seller appears to have done very well out of the sale – Wade Saadi, founder and chief executive of an IT recruitment firm, reportedly bought the documents in the mid-1990s for just a few thousand dollars.

Some of you may be wondering what happened to Ronald Wayne, the man who walked away from what became one of the most successful companies in the world.

According to an interview with Wayne last year, he decided to return to Atari – where incidentally he first met Steve Jobs – because he feared that if the new business venture failed he would end up in dire financial straits.

The auctioned documents show that Wayne received $800 for his 10 percent stake in the company when he left. It’s been estimated that had he stayed he’d be worth $35 billion today. Ouch! In an interview last year, Wayne said, “Would I like to be rich? Everybody would like to be rich but I couldn’t keep up the pace. I would have been wealthy, but I would have been the richest man in the cemetery.”

[Source: BBC]

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Apple

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

Emerging Tech

Original videotape of Apollo landing sells at auction for a cool $1.8 million

Apollo 11 Anniversary Hasselblad

Original videotapes of the moon landing have sold at auction for $1.8 million. Sotheby's describes the tapes as "the earliest, sharpest, and most accurate surviving video images of man’s first steps on the moon," and is offering them in original, unadulterated form -- "unrestored, unenhanced and unremastered."

The original footage of the moon landing was recorded by two cameras -- a Hasselblad and a specially adapted Westinghouse television camera that was mounted to the hatch of the Lunar Module to capture Armstrong's first steps on the moon. The Westinghouse camera was detechable and was later placed on a tripod on the surface to record the activities of the astronauts as well. The footage from this camera was transmitted to the Parkes Observatory in Australia, from where it was sent along to NASA's Houston base and, finally, to televisions around the world.

Computing

Apple’s new 6K display costs $5,000 and can maintain 1,000 nits of brightness

apple pro display xdr wwdc 2019

To complement the announcement of Apple's completely redesigned Mac Pro for 2019, CEO Tim Cook and his team also introduced a new display for its pro users. With features like high-resolution support, increased contrast ratios, precision-calibrated HDR, and a bright panel, Apple is calling its new 32-inch Retina Display with 6K resolution the Pro Display XDR, which starts at $4,999. Apple claims that the display is 40% larger than the iMac 5K's screen, giving developers more room to work on their content.

XDR stands for extreme dynamic range, Cook's team said during Apple's WWDC keynote. "Now for great HDR images, you need extreme brightness, right next to extreme contrast for deep blacks, and this is incredibly hard to achieve," Apple said. "So we have designed a backlight system like none other in the world."

News

Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra: release date window, trailers, gameplay, and more

Captain America and Black Panther clash in Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra footage.

The superhero craze in gaming isn't slowing down as we await the first title from Skydance New Media, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra. This is one of two games to feature Black Panther, but this game, as the name spells out, is set in the past, during World War II. That, of course, can only mean Captain America will be the other major hero to show up. This is a very unique pairing we haven't seen in games before. Given the pedigree of Marvel and the talent at Skydance New Media, most notably Amy Hennig of Uncharted fame, there are some major expectations for this superhero romp. We won't waste time trying to cut off the Hydra's head and go straight to the heart of the matter with all the details we know so far.
Release date

The current release window for Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra is 2025. We suspect it will be in the second half of the year, probably a fall release, but we can only speculate.
Platforms