Apple Founding Contract Expected to Sell for Up to $4 Million USD at Auction
Christie’s prepares to sell the signed 1976 partnership papers and Ron Wayne’s swift exit documents as blue‑chip tech history.
Summary
- The original three-page Apple partnership contract (1976), signed by Jobs, Wozniak, and Wayne, is heading to auction at Christie’s
- The document, called Apple’s “birth certificate,” is estimated to sell for between $2 million USD and $4 million USD on January 23, 2026
- The lot includes Ron Wayne’s withdrawal documents, who sold his 10% share for only $2,300 just 12 days after signing, creating a massive Silicon Valley “what if”
The original three-page Apple Computer Company partnership contract is headed to the auction block at Christie’s in New York, with estimates landing between $2 million USD and $4 million USD for what collectors are already calling Apple’s “birth certificate.”
Signed on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne, the agreement locked in the split that shaped early Apple: 45% for Jobs, 45% for Woz, and 10% for Wayne, who drafted the paperwork himself on his IBM typewriter. The lot also includes Ron Wayne’s withdrawal documents, signed just 12 days later, when he accepted $800 USD up front and a later $1,500 USD payment to walk away from his 10% stake in a company that would become a $4 trillion USD giant.
If untouched in some hypothetical straight line, Wayne’s original 10% share would be worth hundreds of billions today, turning his low-key exit into one of Silicon Valley’s most mythologized “what if” moments.
The contract will headline Christie’s “We the People: America at 250” sale on January 23, 2026, where it will sit alongside a draft of the US Constitution, underlining how tech ephemera now shares space with foundational political documents.
This isn’t the first time the founding papers have traded hands. A similar lot sold at Sotheby’s in 2011 for roughly $1.6 million USD, a number that shows how Apple nostalgia and tech collecting have gone fully blue-chip. In a resale market that has already seen Jobs’ worn Birkenstocks, sealed first‑gen iPhones, and even vintage business cards go for wild premiums, this contract reads less like memorabilia and more like the origin myth in physical form.
