A handwritten Steve Jobs job application just sold for an insane amount of money

Steve Jobs and iPhone (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

A handwritten Steve Jobs job application has sold for $222,400.
The application was penned in 1973 after Jobs dropped out of Reed College.

A handwritten job application from 1973 has sold for a mind-boggling $222,400 or £162,000. The reason? It was penned by none other than Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs.

Jobs reportedly completed the application in 1973 after dropping out of Reed College. It was also around a year before Jobs took a role at Atari – a move that saw him meet up with Steve Wozniak. Neither would have imagined that they'd then go on to create the company that gave us the iPhone 12 and so much more.

A single page signed job application from 1973 is being offered for sale by auction.In the questionnaire Steve Jobs highlights his experience with "computers and calculators" and special abilities in "electronic tech or design engineer – digital".The questionnaire is believed to have been completed around the time he dropped out of Reed College in Portland, Oregon.A year later he joined Atari as a technician where he worked with Steve Wozniak before they founded Apple in 1976.The application is in very good condition with some overall creasing, light staining and old clear tape to the top edge. It is accompanied by letters and certificates of authenticity.Previously it was sold at auction in 2018 for over $175,000.

The auction ran from February 24 and came to a close minutes ago. Someone somewhere now has a very costly piece of paper and, hopefully, some insurance to go with it!

Miss out on this little piece of history? Can I suggest consoling yourself by spending a lot less on one of the best Macs Apple has ever made?

You're welcome.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.