Would you pay $8,000 or more for three business cards? There are about 27,397,260 business cards printed each day, but these three in particular are fetching that price for a reason. They belonged to the late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, and were “caressed and carried by the man himself,” according to the online listing.
The Marin School, a small private school in San Rafael, CA, is auctioning off the business cards as a fundraiser. The opening bid on April 30 was $750; by the next morning, the highest bid was $2,500; by May 5, the bidding had gone over $8,000. The auction will continue online until May 7, then conclude with live bidding at a gala event (absentee bidding will be available for those unable to travel to the West Coast).
The cards are from between 1984 and 1990, when Jobs was CEO of NeXT and chairman of Apple and Pixar. Jobs took some time away from Apple starting in 1985 to establish NeXT, which merged with Apple in 1996. Pixar was separated as its own company in 1986, with Jobs as majority shareholder and Apple as the main funder.
A family whose child attends the school donated the cards for the auction, according to Sierra Antonio, the Marin School’s director of communications. The family used to do catering for Jobs and has held onto the cards all this time.
Antonio said this is the first time the school has had business cards up for auction, though it has been holding such fundraisers since 1982 to support various programs and scholarships.
According to Antonio, the family told the school when donating the cards, “Not sure what they are worth, but hopefully they will get something in your auction.”
Apple-related items always seem to do well at auction even when compared against other tech memorabilia. Last year, one of the company’s first computers went for $905,000.