The 1976 agreement setting up the partnership of the fledgling company started by Steven Jobs, then 19, and Stephen Wozniak, a 24-year-old inventive genius, was originally owned by Ronald Wayne.
Jobs recruited Wayne to write up in legal form the partnership agreement that was signed by Jobs, Wozniak, and Wayne, and that gave Jobs and Wozniak each 45 percent of the company’s shares and Wayne 10 percent.
Wayne became nervous about taking on the risks of a new partnership, so 11 days after the signing he withdrew from the company and was paid $800.
Shortly thereafter Wayne was paid another $1,500 for his share of the company. Today that share would be worth over $2 billion. Jobs’s share when he died last October was estimated to be worth $6 billion.
When Wayne, who lives in Pahtimp, Nev., was asked by Bloomberg News if he was sorry to have sold his share in Apple, he said, “I’ve never regretted pulling out. I’m as enamored by money as anyone else, but I knew that it was going to a considerable strain. It was like having a tiger by the tail.’’
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Grogan & Company ended the 2011 season with its Dec. 11 auction, which attracted bidders from 15 countries and grossed over $850,000.
Topping the auction were a pair of 17th century Chinese high yoke-backed armchairs that sold to a California bidder and a single chair known as an “Official’s Hat’’ armchair that sold to a bidder in the room. The chairs, made of the prized hardwood called huanghuali, were from the classic Chinese furniture collection of J. Malcolm Swanson of Hanover, N.H. The pair of chairs, which had a $60,000-$90,000 estimate, sold for $70,800 and the single chair, which had a $20,000-$30,000 estimate, sold for $53,100.
Other highlights that sold over their estimates included a Chinese Qing Dynasty porcelain butterfly-decorated bottle-form vase ($7,670 against a $800-$1,200 estimate), a 19th-century Chinese Nine Dragon silk embroidered robe ($8,850 against a $3,000-$5,000 estimate), and a Chinese scroll ($7,000 against a $500-$1,000 estimate).
