UPDATE
Nov 15, 2022 7:35 AM CST
Steve Job's old sandals, expected to sell for $60,000 to $80,000 at auction, ultimately demolished that estimate. An unnamed buyer paid a whopping $218,750 for the weathered Birkenstocks over the weekend, setting a record for the highest price ever paid for a pair of sandals at auction, according to Californian auction house Julien's Auctions. Mark Sheff, the Apple co-founder's former house manager in Albany, Calif., had saved the brown suede Arizona sandals when Jobs sought to get rid of them, CNN reports. They were sold with an NFT version as a bonus. The Washington Post notes a new pair of the same sandals currently sells for $125.
Nov 11, 2022 10:21 AM CST
The few remaining Apple-1 computers now sell for hundreds of times their original price of $666—and there's going to be an even bigger markup on the sandals Steve Jobs may have been wearing when he co-founded the company with Steve Wozniak in 1976. A pair of brown leather Birkenstock sandals worn by Jobs in the '70s and '80s are being auctioned off, and bidding has reached $22,500 as of this writing. The weathered sandals can be seen at the Julien's Auctions listing here. The lot also includes an NFT of the sandals. "Steve Jobs wore these sandals during many pivotal moments in Apple’s history" and they have been displayed at numerous exhibitions, the auction house says.
The auction house quotes a Vogue interview in which Chrisann Brennan, mother of Jobs' first child, said, "The sandals were part of his simple side. They were his uniform." She said he admired the simple, practical design and when he was wearing them, he "didn't feel like a businessman, so he had the freedom to think creatively." The listing states: "The cork and jute footbed retains the imprint of Steve Jobs' feet, which had been shaped after years of use. The rubber soles of the sandals show heavy wear from use."
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They were sold to an anonymous bidder for $3,400 in a 2016 auction, but Julien's estimates they will fetch between $60,000 and $80,000 this time around. "If they really do sell for $60,000 or more, that’s a nice profit for just six years of holding on to some gross, old sandals," writes Matt Novak at Gizmodo. (More Steve Jobs stories.)
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