These Handwritten Schematics by Steve Wozniak Just Sold for Over Half a Million Dollars

It’s not uncommon for Apple memorabilia to fetch huge amounts of money when they go up for auction, although in most cases it’s the actual historical Apple hardware that’s sold for well into the six- and seven-figure price ranges, while autographed items and others of a more eclectic nature rarely come in above the five-figure range.

However, in an unusual reversal of that trend, a set of signed schematics for an early prototype Apple computer have actually sold at auction for almost as much as an original Apple computer itself.

Specifically, Boston auction house RR Auction just announced that a set of detailed schematics and programming instructions penned by none other than the great Steve “Woz” Wozniak himself just sold for a staggering $630,272.50

The documents were work-in-progress diagrams that included notations, circuit changes, and programming notes, created as Woz went through the engineering and development process for the original Apple II prototype. They were accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from the Wozniak himself, who described them thusly:

“These documents, circa 1975, are my original Apple II prototype schematics and programming instructions. They are precious. On these work-in-progress diagrams, you can even see my breadboarding technique, where I’d go over drawn connections in red as I soldered the wires in. At the time, I favored using a purple felt tip pen for writing, so it’s interesting to see these notes decades on. The prototype was hand-wired while I was still an engineer at Hewlett-Packard’s Advanced Product Division, where I was involved in the design of hand-held calculators.”

The auction item opened at a mere $300, but the price clearly skyrocketed to one of the highest amounts ever paid for a piece of pure paper Apple memorabilia, although it’s not hard to understand why from reading the description of the item, which identifies it as a true piece of Apple history that’s far more significant than simply a Steve Jobs magazine autograph.

To put this in perspective, these 23 pages of “hand-drawn and handwritten” documents actually sold in the same price range as vintage Apple computers from the same era. For example, at the very same auction, an original Apple-1 Computer signed by Woz fetched $763,862.50 — considerably more than even the BMW Z8 owned by Steve Jobs.

A few years ago, an original Apple 1 fetched up to $1,000,000 at auction, but it was also said to be one of the very first models of Apple computer ever made, built by Steve Wozniak in the garage of Steve Jobs’ parents’ house, and therefore obviously from the same era that this latest set of Woz notes came from as well.

Apple Memorabilia

While that was one of the highest-priced Apple computers ever sold, it’s actually quite common for early models of the Apple I and Apple II to fetch over half a million dollars, but not nearly so unusual for a swath of papers to sell in that same range.

For instance, a couple of years ago, several items signed by Steve Jobs — including a signed 1973 job application, a rare 2001 Mac OS X manual, and a signed newspaper article for the $199 iPhone 3G — each went for under $100,000, while a copy of Fortune magazine once reluctantly signed by Jobs sold for $11,000.

This latest round of Apple memorabilia was featured by RR Auction in an entirely Apple-themed auction that also saw Steve Wozniak’s Apple ‘rainbow’ sunglasses sell for $18,972.50, along with an Apple 20th Anniversary Award presented to customers in Japan who purchased the “Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh” in 1997 fetching $22,467.50.

Other notable items in this latest Apple-themed auction included:

1. ‘Battleship’ Keyboard signed by Jobs and Wozniak — $74,535.
2. Douglas Engelbart Three-Button Mouse — $34,475.75
3. A letter to Del Yocam, former COO of Apple, signed by Steve Jobs offering him employment at NeXT — $32,893.75
4. Monsters, Inc. Cue Sheet signed by Steve Jobs — $12,501.25
5. Original Steve Jobs “Chairman of the Board” business card — $4,812.50
6. Intel customer ID badge worn by Steve Jobs in 1986 — $3,750.00
7. An Apple II computer that belonged to Del Yocam, Apple COO — $2,168.75
   

Of course, not everything sold for even those higher prices, as the auction included a number of otherwise more mundane items, such as promotional materials, posters, and floppy discs, most of which sold for relatively paltrier sums of hundreds of dollars. You can see the whole list on RR Auction’s site.