Just when we thought we’d seen everything about Steve Jobs, boom, something new appears. We’re used to the typical auctions of sealed iPhones and signed manuals that cost a fortune… what else is there to leave? The answer: much more and much less often than we imagined.
What just arrived at the RR auction is crazy because it’s not a shop item. These are objects and things that were lying around in Steve Jobs’ house before he became a legend.. And a significant part of these lots comes from the vault of John Hovanek, his half-brother, who decided to bring real treasures to the world for the 50th anniversary of Apple.
John Chovanek: Keeper of Secrets
The name John Chovanek probably doesn’t sound familiar to you, and that’s okay. He is the son of the woman with whom Paul Jobs, Steve’s foster father, married in the early 90s. By that time, Steve was already known in Silicon Valley. For John over the years, Steve was a mix of distant relative and living legend: someone who was talked about in the family but who also graced the covers of magazines.
One day, during a visit to a house in Los Altos, Steve Jobs took him to his old room, the same house that shared the famous garage where Apple’s first steps were taken. After seeing so many old items, John asked him what he was going to do with it all. And Steve Jobs replied: “Take it, I don’t want any of it.”
Thank God he listened to her. For many years, almost silently, John Chovanek worked at Apple and He kept those things like a small private museum. Not bragging about his family relationship or revealing to anyone the origin of the papers, desk, or junk he salvaged from Steve’s room.
Now that Apple is celebrating its 50th anniversary, decided to open this trunk: up for auction is an original desk, notebooks with electronic notes, documents from his time at Atari, posters, Apple‑1 cables, even bow ties and music tapes.
One of the most expensive objects at auction
Garage table: “zero point” in details
Steve’s personal desk up for auction is a time capsule that takes us back to the days before he founded Apple. At first glance, it’s a beautiful, honey-colored, mid-century modern table… but when you get closer, you’ll see signs of a normal teenager: The wood has hand engravings, including one with his sister’s name “Patricia”.
Steve Jobs’ desk
But the best was inside the drawers. John Havanek took things as they were, and things appeared. There are handwritten notes where his perfectionism in printing is already visible. His Hewlett-Packard tax return for 1971 also surfaced, showing that he earned a modest $1,080 that year.
Steve Jobs’ desk
From butterflies to horoscopes
In addition to the desk, the auction includes many everyday items. To the black turtlenecks was a child who kept his school bow ties. Or interesting things like a custom horoscope that was printed when I was working as a technician at Atari.
Steve Jobs bow ties
There are also touching details, such as an Apple business card with a handwritten note to his father that simply says, “Hi, I’m back.” PLEASE many magazines The era of the interface from the 70s, which was preserved not by Steve, but by his father Paul Jobs, every time his son went out in them. Typical pride of the father who keeps the trimmings.
Origin of everything: scratch plate and check #1
And to top it all off, there are two parts that are pure Apple history. On the one hand, we have the Apple-1 Celebration, which is basically a “scratch board” a prototype they used to test if the design worked before starting to produce anything.
Apple-1 board
On the other hand, there is check number 1. This is the first check that Apple signed in its history on March 16, 1976. That’s $500 for Howard Cantin, who designed the plaques. The funniest thing is that Jobs gave him a choice: stock or money. Howard preferred the money. Today he will tear his hair out.
Check number 1
The auction also has room for items that contrast with the simplicity of Jobs’ desk, some of which border on the surreal:
Golden iPad and George W. Bush diamonds: this is true. Up for auction is a 24-carat gold-plated, diamond-encrusted iPad 2, a gift from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah to former President Bush.
“Banned” iPhone Geohot– Original iPhone 4GB hacked by Geohot, the legendary hacker who managed to unlock the device for the first time.
Wozniak’s “rainbow” glasses: compared to Jobs’ minimalism, Wozniak’s legendary glasses with the apple logo in the shape of blinds.
The “Apple Cafe” that never was: Concept photos of an Apple-themed coffee shop project that never came to fruition.
The auction will end on January 29and there is no doubt that the stakes will rise to astronomical figures day after day until the last second. It’s worth taking a few minutes to look through the pages of the catalog, because among so many crazy numbers, there’s pure Apple history waiting to be discovered.
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