Steve Jobs Signed Apple Check No. 1 Sold for $2.4m at Auction

The earliest known check drawn from Apple’s original bank account has sold for $2,409,886 at RR Auction's Steve Jobs & the Computer Revolution: The Apple 50th Anniversary Auction.

Dated March 16, 1976, the Wells Fargo check marked 'No. 1' was written to printed circuit board designer Howard Cantin and signed by Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The payment predates Apple’s formal incorporation by more than two weeks and documents one of the company’s earliest recorded business transactions.

The $500 check was issued shortly after Jobs and Wozniak opened Apple’s first bank account and records one of the earliest instances of business activity conducted under the Apple name. Cantin was responsible for translating Wozniak’s Apple-1 schematic into a manufacturable printed circuit board, enabling Apple to move toward its first commercial product.

According to contemporaneous banking records, Apple’s initial deposit, also $500, was made the same day the check was written. The corresponding withdrawal appears on the company’s earliest surviving bank statement, directly linking the document to Apple’s first known financial activity.

“This is the most important financial document in Apple history,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction. “It captures Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak’s first true business transaction."

The document bears both founders’ signatures and was issued prior to the April 1, 1976, partnership agreement that formally established Apple Computer. That agreement required expenditures over $100 to be approved by more than one partner, a detail consistent with the dual signatures appearing on the check. The check was authenticated and encapsulated, and endorsed on the reverse by Cantin. It carries the same routing and account numbers as later Apple checks, which would soon reflect Apple’s first listed Palo Alto address.

Other highlights included:

• March 1976 Wells Fargo bank statement for Apple Computer Co. (sold for $828,569
)
• Steve Jobs’s personally owned 1977 Apple Computer Inc. poster ($659,900
)
• Steve Jobs’s Apple Computer business card with handwritten note to his father ($97,439
)
• Steve Jobs’s bedroom desk from the Apple garage property ($81,989)