HIGHLIGHTS

•  Apple co-founder Steve Jobs filled up a job application back in 1973.
• The application is still intact for most parts and features the technology genius’ handwriting.
• This was the fourth time that the application was put on auction.

Steve Jobs will always be known for co-founding the favourite technology company of many. Very few, however, are aware that the technology and entrepreneur genius actually applied for a job prior to his Apple days. A living proof of the same was recently auctioned off for a whopping $3,43,00 or Rs 2.5 crore.

This “proof” comes in the form of a job application filled by Steve Jobs himself, dating back to 1973. Jobs was only 18-years old at the time, and it is claimed that this is the only job application young Jobs ever filled in his life.

Of course, there were much bigger things waiting for Jobs. Though the hand-written application by a young Jobs is a shining example of the innocent stage that all of us go through when looking for our first source of income. Jobs mentioned having a driving license in the application but no phone and that access to transportation was “possible but not probable.”

It is, thus, easy to see how the job application has a unique appeal to it, partly the reason why it sold for such an enormous amount. Note that this is not the first time that the job applications by Jobs have been sold at an auction.

The memorabilia has gone on auction thrice before this, rising in value each time. Just this March, the same job application was sold for GBP 162,000 (or Rs 1.7 crore). It first went up for auction in 2017 with Bonhams in New York.

This auction, however, was the first of its kind in several aspects. For starters, it did not just have a physical copy of the job application. It even sold it off in an NFT or Non-fungible token format.

In fact, this was one of the main reasons the auction was conducted. A group of friends under the alias Winthorpe Ventures held the auction to understand if the digital asset had a similar value to its physical form. So while people bid for the physical job application in US dollars, the NFT was being auctioned off using Ethereum.

The group got the answer it sought by the end of the auction. The auction concluded with the print copy of the job application by Steve Jobs going for over four times what the NFT version received.

So, we now know that people are more interested in the actual letter written by Jobs himself, and not a mere digital copy of it. Can this principle apply to the rest of the art forms too? The answer will likely shape the future of NFTs in the world.