iPod Shuffle Autographed by Steve Jobs Hits eBay for $25K

Following Apple’s founding contracts selling for nearly $1.6 million dollars at a
Sotheby’s auction in New York last week, now an iPod shuffle autographed by none other than Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is fetching a pretty penny on EBay.

Currently sitting around US $25,000, the current owner tells a pretty interesting story about how he came across the device. Apparently, as part of the “innovators of tomorrow” program, the man along with three colleagues attended an Apple event and also received the 4th gen iPod shuffle in the process. According to the seller, this is what he said when he finally got the chance to approach Jobs at the end the event:

“I hear you’re not really one to give autographs, but I just gotta ask…. will you sign my iPod? It’s fine if you don’t want to. I’m not normally one to even ask for autographs.” 

If we are to believe the seller, this is how Jobs responded:

Steve: *chuckling* “It’s quite alright. You heard that about me? Well I wouldn’t say that I don’t like giving autographs, I guess I was never comfortable with the idea solely taking credit for something, which is to me what an autograph might imply. To be honest, I think I’m the last person who should sign something. A writer signing a book I can understand, but I think if anybody within our company should sign something, it should be members from our R&D team and all the others responsible for product innovation. It’s unfortunate that they all can’t receive the same level recognition. But I suppose it’s easier this way though?….you would need a pretty big iPod to fit all those signatures”

Not surprisingly there has been some speculation over the legitimacy of the signature and the seller’s story. That will obviously have to be left up to the experts, but Handwriting University put together a pretty extensive look into Steve’s signature if you’re interested in doing some investigative work.

You can check out the eBay listing here, which seems to be jumping up a few thousands dollars every couple hours or so.

Update: The eBay listing has now been pulled for unspecified reasons, although it’s probably safe to assume suspected fraud had something to do with this one. We’ll update this post if any more details become available.

(via 9to5Mac)

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