Courtesy of RR Auction

Coincidentally, that original partnership agreement between Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, signed on April 1, 1976, is also up for bid this month at Christie’s. (Wayne got cold feet shortly after the signing and sold his 10 percent stake to the Steves for $800.) It’s among the “works of art, furniture and documents that changed American history” offered in a sale called “We the People: America at 250.” Christie’s estimates that the partnership document will sell in the range of $2 million to $4 million.

Items relating to early Apple history, especially items that involve Jobs, have gone to stratospheric prices in recent years. Jobs was famously reluctant to sign items, and his signature is regarded as among the most valuable of any public figure. Even a signed business card can go for as much as six figures. “There’s an emotional connection between Steve Jobs and collectors,” says RR’s executive vice president, Bobby Livingston. “People who start their own internet or engineering companies love Apple products.” Lonnie Mimms, the owner of check #2 and the founder of a tech museum in Roswell, Georgia, gushes about the value of such pieces of paper. “You can get anything in the world with a Steve Wozniak signature on it, but Jobs is another story. And the two of them together is the highest form of rarity.”

The items released by Chovanec are in another domain. Some of them seem to belong less to history than the realm of religious relics. After Paul Jobs died, Steve promised that Chovanec’s mother could live in the house “until you drop.” Chovanec says that the notoriously unsentimental Jobs wasn’t interested in anything in his former home except some family photos. When it came to the desk and its contents, he says Jobs told him to just take it. Chovanec’s mother, Marilyn, remained in the house until her death in 2019. For years the desk and other items were stored in Chovanec’s garage. He actually worked for Apple beginning in 2005, not revealing it to Jobs until after he was hired. During his 16-year stint at the company, first in the supply chain section and then in the retail group, few knew that he was Jobs’ stepbrother. “I felt it was nobody’s business,” he says. When Chovanec attended Jobs’ memorial service at Stanford in 2011, he says, “some executives looked at me with a look, like, ‘What are you doing here?’”