The $500 cheque that helped build Apple into a $4 trillion company just got sold

A single $500 cheque, written nearly five decades ago, has just become one of the most expensive pieces of tech history ever sold. In January, a handwritten Wells Fargo cheque signed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was auctioned for $2,409,886, according to RR Auction. What makes it remarkable is not just the price, but what it represents: one of the very first financial steps toward the creation of Apple.

Dated March 16, 1976, the cheque is numbered “1” and was made out to Howard Cantin, a circuit board designer. The payment was for translating Wozniak’s Apple-1 schematic into a manufacturable printed circuit board. Weeks later, on April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formally established Apple Computer.


Both founders signed the cheque, and Cantin endorsed it on the back, turning a modest transaction into a historic artifact. Over the next 50 years, Apple would go on to redefine personal technology with products like the Mac, iPhone, and Apple Watch. This cheque offers a rare, tangible glimpse into the company’s earliest days, before the polish, scale, and global influence.

The auction was held to mark Apple’s 50th anniversary. According to RR Auction, the buyer is a serious collector with a deep personal connection to Steve Jobs’ legacy and is building a museum-quality collection intended to be made public in the future. For now, the buyer has chosen to remain anonymous.

The cheque was not the only headline-grabber. A preproduction Apple-1 prototype sold for $2.75 million, while a March 1976 Apple Computer Co. Wells Fargo bank statement fetched over $828,500. The auction ran from January 6 to January 29.

From a $500 cheque to a multi-trillion-dollar company, this small piece of paper quietly tells one of the biggest stories in tech history.