"very happy to own a piece of American (World) history"
Ah, but does he own it, or is he simply granted a conditional license to read it now and again? Hope he checked the fine print.
Apple's founding documents have sold for ten times their estimated price at a Sotheby's auction, fetching $1.59 million. The contract establishing the corporation, along with further paperwork removing one of the three original founders, were expected to go for around $150,000, but were snapped up by Eduardo Cisneros, CEO of …
so not only did he sell out of the company early and so give up what would now be 2 billion dollars, he also sold the documents in '94 and so missed out on making 1.5 million if he'd sold them today.
that guy has had a really long run of bad fortune. dude is either due a lottery win, or did something so terrible that karma has spent all his life screwing with him.
Ron Wayne, not a lucky guy, but a lot stronger than most people would have been. I bet he has a tattoo that says "Hindsight is 20/20, now piss off"
As far as the auction goes, it looks like two or more filthy rich people throwing money away so that they can claim to be "Owner of some spiffy Apple paperwork." Someone just give them a hug already, and tell them they're special. Repeat after me Eduardo, "I'm a winner, I'm a winner!" Now just keep telling yourself that.
So a subject of the fiercely anti-US Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is paying an inordinate amount of money to own what could be the ultimate symbol of American capitalism. Take that up Mr Chavez.
Or on second thoughts, just nationalize the Cisneros group and use the paper to light up a pair of good cigars with your Cuban chum Sr Castro. That would be a good one.
Here:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/06/apple-co-founder-ron-waynes-long-strange-and-sad-trip/
It says $*22* Billion...
"We don’t hear much about Ron Wayne, one of the three founders of Apple Computer in 1976. That might be because he gave back a stake that would be worth $22 billion today a mere 12 days after he got it from his partners, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak."