![\"Image](\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/695c6a110b14981b6cee2e66\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/3508793_1%25206000%2520Steve%2520Jobs%2520and%2520Steve%2520Wozniak%2520Historic%2520Signed%25201976%2520Apple%2520Computer%2520Check%2520(No.jpg\"\/)
<\/picture><\/span><\/div>\nCourtesy of RR Auction<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Coincidentally, that original partnership agreement between Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, signed on April 1, 1976, is also up for bid<\/a> this month at Christie\u2019s. (Wayne got cold feet shortly after the signing and sold his 10 percent stake to the Steves for $800.) It’s among the \u201cworks of art, furniture and documents that changed American history\u201d offered in a sale called “We the People: America at 250.\u201d Christie\u2019s estimates that the partnership document will sell in the range of $2 million to $4 million.<\/p>\n Items relating to early Apple history, especially items that involve Jobs, have gone to stratospheric prices in recent years. Jobs was famously reluctant to sign items, and his signature is regarded as among the most valuable of any public figure. Even a signed business card can go for as much as six figures<\/a>. \u201cThere’s an emotional connection between Steve Jobs and collectors,\u201d says RR\u2019s executive vice president, Bobby Livingston. \u201cPeople who start their own internet or engineering companies love Apple products.\u201d Lonnie Mimms, the owner of check #2 and the founder of a tech museum<\/a> in Roswell, Georgia, gushes about the value of such pieces of paper. \u201cYou can get anything in the world with a Steve Wozniak signature on it, but Jobs is another story. And the two of them together is the highest form of rarity.\u201d<\/p>\n The items released by Chovanec are in another domain. Some of them seem to belong less to history than the realm of religious relics. After Paul Jobs died, Steve promised that Chovanec\u2019s mother could live in the house \u201cuntil you drop.\u201d Chovanec says that the notoriously unsentimental Jobs wasn\u2019t interested in anything in his former home except some family photos. When it came to the desk and its contents, he says Jobs told him to just take it. Chovanec\u2019s mother, Marilyn, remained in the house until her death in 2019. For years the desk and other items were stored in Chovanec\u2019s garage. He actually worked for Apple beginning in 2005, not revealing it to Jobs until after he was hired. During his 16-year stint at the company, first in the supply chain section and then in the retail group, few knew that he was Jobs\u2019 stepbrother. \u201cI felt it was nobody\u2019s business,\u201d he says. When Chovanec attended Jobs\u2019 memorial service at Stanford in 2011, he says, \u201csome executives looked at me with a look, like, \u2018What are you<\/em> doing here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n