First Apple stock certificate awarded to Steve Jobs on sale for $195,000

An Apple stock certificate thought to be the first awarded to company cofounder Steve Jobs, and later recovered from a trash heap, is being sold by an autograph and rare documents dealer for $195,000.

On sale now at Moments in Time, the certificate appears to have been issued to Jobs shortly after Apple went public in 1980, as evidenced by a 1981 date perforated into the document, reports Silicon Beat.

According to Moments in Time's Gary Zimet, the common stock certificate hung on Jobs' office wall in Cupertino, Calif., until 1985. At the time, then-CEO John Sculley — brought in to run Apple in 1983 — famously helped force Jobs out of the company.

As told by Zimet, shortly after the ouster in 1985, Sculley called for Jobs' office to be cleared out. The certificate on sale today was dumped in the trash along with other paraphernalia, but an industrious employee recovered the document and kept it for 31 years.

After a series of missteps that nearly bankrupted Apple, Jobs was ultimately brought back into the fold through the 1997 acquisition of NeXT. Once again at the helm of the company he cofounded, Jobs cultivated development of a series of popular products like iMac, iPhone and iPad, leading Apple to become the world's most valuable company.

In giving up the important piece of Apple lore, the unnamed employee has provided a notarized letter attesting to the document's authenticity, the publication said. Beyond the letter, there is little else to corroborate Zimet's story.

Apple artifacts, especially items linked to Jobs, often sell for sky-high prices. In 2011, a batch of documents that included an original founding document signed by Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne sold for $1.6 million. Zimet priced the stock certificate at $195,000 based in part on those previous sales.

14 Comments

mknelson 1146 comments · 9 Years

About 8 years ago

I'm curious - does anybody here know what this would be worth (if it were still valid) at the current stock price with the various stock splits over the years?

****
Oh, split 4 times, 2, 2, 2, 7. So 56x

So, $6300ish

anantksundaram 20390 comments · 18 Years

I stopped reading at the end of Para 4. The only thought in my mind was: Sculley was a third-rate, despicable jerk with no remote concept of his brush with greatness. What a loser. The only reason he won't end up on the trash heap of history is because his name is associated with Steve Jobs.

coolfactor 2332 comments · 20 Years

"cultivated development of a series of popular products like iMac, iPhone and iPad,

I think you're missing one very important one in that list!

radarthekat 3902 comments · 12 Years

As soon as I saw the headline I thought of my brief essay on minimalism. It applies, I think. Recommended reading for anyone contemplating spending a couple hundred grand on a stock certificate.

----

Minimalism, to me, is relieving yourself of the responsibility for things, and seeing them as they are; just another collection of atoms, in a configuration designed to perform some function.

Take art, an oil painting from another century. It has value as history, and it has intrinsic [practical] value. The intrinsic value of a painting is its ability to fill a spot on your wall and provide you a nice image to look upon. That's value that even a cheap poster can provide. But when it's an 18th century oil painting by a renowned artist, we tend to focus more on its imaginary value; its value as a rare object, its value as a commentary on the life and culture of its time period in history. And we pay thousands, even millions of dollars for those components of its value. As a minimalist, I look at that rare painting, or object (sculpture, vase, classic car, etc) and I say to myself, okay, I get it, there's all this value to it beyond its practical value as decoration or, in the case of an old car, transportation. But do I need to own it for it to have that value? Wouldn't it have that same value in another's hands, where they have the responsibility of caring for and protecting this piece of history, and I can visit it in a museum if I need to stand in its presence? A minimalist will likely answer No, I don't need to own it in order to appreciate it. And so I see no value in collecting these aggregations of atoms, taking on the responsibility for their care and safe keeping. Just knowing they are in this world, out there somewhere being preserved for future generations, that's enough for me. I don't need to own it and take on that responsibility.

This reminds me of an old Gallagher joke, where he talks about his enormous seashell collection, "perhaps you've seen it," he says, "I keep it on beaches all over the world."

There's another aspect of minimalism. A recognition that humans, in our illogical desire to collect things, to fill our lives with possessions, are consuming the natural world, and converting it to so many landfills. Take those seashells Gallagher left on the beaches for us to enjoy. Do we leave them there for the enjoyment of those who next visit the beach? No, we collect them, fill bags with them, sell and buy them in souvenir shops, to take home as a remembrance of our vacation at the beach, not satisfied merely with our memories or the selfies in our smartphones.

And then what do we do? We display them for a while, on a shelf or on our desk, until we acquire some other bauble to replace them, and then they go in a box, into a closet or basement or garage alongside other stuff we collected but no longer have room for. And then the box, one day, goes to the curb, picked up and taken off to add to a landfill.

In geologic time scales, humanity has been industrialized for a mere blink of an eye, and in that short period we've visibly altered the globe with our endless and hungry consumption. And almost everything that passes through our hands ends up in landfills.

The world needs more minimalists who live lighter, who consume only what we need, who leave things mostly where we find them. And are happier and less burdened with shifting around all those atoms.

roake 820 comments · 10 Years

radarthekat said:

As soon as I saw the headline I thought of my brief essay on minimalism. It applies, I think. Recommended reading for anyone contemplating spending a couple hundred grand on a stock certificate.

----

Minimalism, to me, is relieving yourself of the responsibility for things, and seeing them as they are; just another collection of atoms, in a configuration designed to perform some function.

Take art, an oil painting from another century. It has value as history, and it has intrinsic [practical] value. The intrinsic value of a painting is its ability to fill a spot on your wall and provide you a nice image to look upon. That's value that even a cheap poster can provide. But when it's an 18th century oil painting by a renowned artist, we tend to focus more on its imaginary value; its value as a rare object, its value as a commentary on the life and culture of its time period in history. And we pay thousands, even millions of dollars for those components of its value. As a minimalist, I look at that rare painting, or object (sculpture, vase, classic car, etc) and I say to myself, okay, I get it, there's all this value to it beyond its practical value as decoration or, in the case of an old car, transportation. But do I need to own it for it to have that value? Wouldn't it have that same value in another's hands, where they have the responsibility of caring for and protecting this piece of history, and I can visit it in a museum if I need to stand in its presence? A minimalist will likely answer No, I don't need to own it in order to appreciate it. And so I see no value in collecting these aggregations of atoms, taking on the responsibility for their care and safe keeping. Just knowing they are in this world, out there somewhere being preserved for future generations, that's enough for me. I don't need to own it and take on that responsibility.

This reminds me of an old Gallagher joke, where he talks about his enormous seashell collection, "perhaps you've seen it," he says, "I keep it on beaches all over the world."

There's another aspect of minimalism. A recognition that humans, in our illogical desire to collect things, to fill our lives with possessions, are consuming the natural world, and converting it to so many landfills. Take those seashells Gallagher left on the beaches for us to enjoy. Do we leave them there for the enjoyment of those who next visit the beach? No, we collect them, fill bags with them, sell and buy them in souvenir shops, to take home as a remembrance of our vacation at the beach, not satisfied merely with our memories or the selfies in our smartphones.

And then what do we do? We display them for a while, on a shelf or on our desk, until we acquire some other bauble to replace them, and then they go in a box, into a closet or basement or garage alongside other stuff we collected but no longer have room for. And then the box, one day, goes to the curb, picked up and taken off to add to a landfill.

In geologic time scales, humanity has been industrialized for a mere blink of an eye, and in that short period we've visibly altered the globe with our endless and hungry consumption. And almost everything that passes through our hands ends up in landfills.

The world needs more minimalists who live lighter, who consume only what we need, who leave things mostly where we find them. And are happier and less burdened with shifting around all those atoms.

Wow. That's the minimalist quote I've seen in a while (at least regarding lengthy). You should give me a valuable painting. :smiley: