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APPLE COMPUTER CHECK BRINGS BIG BUCKSJustin Perrault sent along this article about an early Apple Computer Company check that just sold for $46,063 with the buyer's premium. Thanks. -Editor 
It's not clear what Apple was buying from RadioShack on July 23, 1976 for a mere four bucks and some change, and adjusting for inflation doesn't make it much clearer. According to the US Bureau of Labor statistics, Jobs would have been cutting a check for $21.61 were he to make the same purchase in 2023. Regardless, the check was cut around the same time the Apple-1 went on sale at Paul Terrell's Byte Shop in Mountain View, CA, for $666.66, meaning it was probably for something important. For those unfamiliar with the saga of Apple's early days, Terrell offered to buy 50 of the machines for $500 a pop, but only if they came fully assembled. Other hobbyist computers of the era typically came as unassembled kits. So solder, perhaps? "That was the biggest single episode in all of the company's history. Nothing in subsequent years was so great and so unexpected," Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak later said of Terrell's order. Interestingly enough, this is the second Jobs-signed check from the early days of Apple to be auctioned by RR this year – the auction house sold a $175 check from Apple to managing consultant firm Cramptom, Remke & Miller in May for $106,985. Anything signed by Jobs, who was famously averse to autographs, can go for a small fortune to the right collector. A 1983 letter from Jobs to a fan asking for an autograph, in which Jobs both declined the request for an autograph and signed the letter, was sold at auction by RR in 2021 for a whopping $479,939.
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Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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