A signed 1983 Apple business card has gone back under the hammer, following one that sold for $180,000 in 2024. RR Auction has sold 15 Steve Jobs business cards over the years, but only four are from 1983, and the one currently up for sale, open at $70,741, is only the second ever to carry his real signature. That's a striking sum for a scrap of card. But how does it compare with the most expensive signatures ever sold?
1. George Washington — $9.8 million (£7.7m)
Top of the list by a wide margin. America's first president signed his own personal copy of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, and when Christie's sold it in 2012, it fetched $9.8 million, reported at the time by Reuters. The buyer was the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, which still has it on display at Washington's former estate.
2. William Shakespeare — $4.6 million (£3.6m)
Not a single handwritten play by Shakespeare has ever surfaced. All that survives are six examples of his signature, and five of those are held permanently by British institutions, including the British Museum. The sixth, the only one ever in private hands, sold at Sotheby's in 2006 for $4.6 million.
3. Abraham Lincoln — $3.7 million (£2.9m)
Lincoln's signature on a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation sold for $3.7 million at Sotheby's in December 2010. Lincoln signed 48 of these in 1864 to raise money for the Union war effort, but only 27 are known to survive. This particular copy had once belonged to the Kennedy family, a detail that helped it sell for far more than a similar copy that went for $2.1 million just two years later.
4. Albert Einstein — $2.9 million (£2.3m)
A year before his death, Einstein wrote a candid letter setting out his views on God and religion. Known as the “God letter,” it sold for $2.9 million at Christie's in 2018, nearly double its estimate, according to The Guardian. It remains the highest price ever paid for an Einstein letter.
5. The tsunami relief guitar — $2.7 million (£2.1m)
Not every entry here is a single signature on paper. In 2005, a white Fender Stratocaster covered in the signatures of 19 musicians, including Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, David Gilmour and Eric Clapton, was sold to raise money for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It went for $2.7 million, a world record for a guitar, bought by a member of Qatar's royal family.
So where does the Steve Jobs business card fit in?
Nowhere close. It shares the same ingredients as every entry above: rarity, proper authentication, and a widely recognised name, just without the centuries of history behind it. Give the tech memorabilia market long enough, and a name like Jobs' might climb this list one day, but for now it's not even in the same league.
