In 1990, John Chovanec’s mother married Steve Jobs’ father, Paul. Chovanec was never close to his stepbrother, who was then CEO of Pixar and Next, but their interactions were always amiable. On one memorable occasion, Jobs took Chovanec into his childhood bedroom—in the house with the famed garage where the first Apple computers were assembled—and fired up an early Macintosh to deliver a personal chronicle of how it was developed.
Now Chovanec, who wound up in possession of much of the contents of that bedroom, has consigned a collection of the ephemera to RR Auction for sale. Items include Jobs’ desk, its drawers filled with Reed College notebooks and work he did for Atari in the mid-’70s; the Bob Dylan 8-track tapes (and one Joan Baez tape) he listened to incessantly; a set of magazines that Jobs’ father kept to commemorate cover stories about his son; Jobs’ annotated horoscope generated by an Atari computer; his copy of How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive; an early Apple poster that hung in the living room of the house; and a dozen bow ties that he wore in high school. Also up for bid: a document Jobs signed related to the sale of his father’s 1984 Ford Ranger pickup.
Courtesy of RR Auction
The Chovanec contributions are part of a larger collection of items up for bid. The star of the auction is the first check cut by Apple Computer Inc. (The auction house is not revealing the current owner.) Written on March 16, 1976, it predates the partnership agreement that formalized the company’s origin 18 days later. Cosigned by Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the $500 check is written to circuit-board designer Howard Cantin, who did the work for what would become the Apple 1. In a 2012 interview, Cantin said that Jobs actually offered him stock but he preferred a direct payment. So the cofounders paid him through a newly created Wells Fargo bank account with funds that came from the sale of Jobs’ VW bus and Woz’s HP calculator. Now, of course, the company is worth trillions of dollars. Previously, the earliest Apple check up for sale was #2, written on March 19, 1976, to Ramlor Inc., a circuit-board maker. In an August 2023 auction, it sold for $135,261. RR expects a much higher bid for this one—closer to $500,000.