Steve Jobs’ pre-Apple job application expected to fetch $50k at auction

A job application filled out in 1973 by future Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is expected to sell for $50,000 when it hits the auction block next month.

The one-page pre-Apple employment questionnaire is among a collection of rare items signed by Jobs being sold by Boston’s RR Auction announced Thursday.

Only 18 at the time, Jobs filled out the form seeking employment as an “electronics tech or design engineer” three years before co-founding Apple and ultimately going on to launch products including the iPod and iPhone.

The eventual entrepreneur signed his name as “Steven jobs,” gave his address as “reed college” and listed his phone number as “none,” according to a copy shared by the auction house.

Jobs wrote that he studied “english lit,” and that he was skilled in using both calculators and computers.

“[P]ossible, but not probable,” Jobs wrote in response to a question concerning his access to transportation.

The document does not identity the name of the company Jobs applied to.

The questionnaire is in “very good condition, with intersecting folds, overall creasing, light staining and some old clear tape to the top edge,” and accompanied by letters of authenticity, the auction house explained. Bidding is slated to run from March 8 to March 15.

Jobs enrolled at Portland’s Reed College in 1972, but he dropped out after only six months of classes. He ultimately took a job as a technician for Atari in 1974, and in 1976 he co-founded the Apple Computer Company at his garage in Los Altos, California.

Jobs left Apple in the 1980s, but he returned the following decade and served as CEO from 1997 until handing the reins in 2011 to Tim Cook. Jobs died later that year of respiratory arrest resulting from the spread of a pancreatic tumor. He was 56.

Other items signed by Jobs being auctioned include a technical manual he signed in 2001 and a newspaper clipping from 2008. Auctioneers have valued those items at $25,000 and $15,000, respectively.

“Steve Jobs was a notoriously difficult signer…and his autograph is incredibly scarce among contemporary figures,” RR Auction noted.