Steve Jobs’ ‘Well-Used’ Sandals Find A New Solemate For $218K
Image via Julien’s Auctions
Once you remove the rose-tinted glasses, you’ll realize that everyone—whether celebrity or layperson—is like any other human being. Every box they own collects dust, and every white shirt they love turns yellow eventually.
With that being said, someone has shelled out over US$200,000 to acquire a pair of well-worn Birkenstocks used by late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Your YEEZYs can’t compare.
The brown suede sandals were previously anticipated to go off the market for US$60,000–$80,000 when they were listed by Julien’s Auctions. Instead, they reaped a whopping $218,750. As per the company, this is the most anyone has ever paid for a pair of sandals at auction.
The “well-used” but still “intact” footwear was part of the auction house’s November 11 Icons and Idols: Rock ‘n’ Roll sale on featuring belongings of stars, including a guitar smashed by the late Kurt Cobain.
The shoes are accompanied by a non-fungible token depicting the sandals being rotated around.
According to the auctioneer, the Birkenstocks were such a staple for Jobs that their cork and jute footbeds have molded to “the imprint of Steve Jobs’ feet.”
The indentations also allude to the toil and focus that led to Apple’s phenomenal success and longevity. Jobs had used the sandals when he paced the floors of his California home, the first headquarters of the now most valuable company in the world, back in the 1970s and 1980s.
The tech genius apparently threw away the Birkenstocks when they no longer served him well. However, they were quickly retrieved from the garbage by his former house manager, Mark Sheff, who clearly foresaw their historical value.
Chrisann Brennan, the mother of Jobs’ first child Lisa Brennan-Jobs, once described that the sandals represented the Apple co-founder’s “simple side.”
In a 2018 interview with Vogue Germany, Brennan revealed that the Birkenstocks were part of Jobs’ “uniform” and allowed him to—comfortably—fixate on more important things than what to wear.
“In Birkenstocks he didn’t feel like a businessman, so he had the freedom to think creatively,” said Brennan, as quoted by Julien’s Auctions.
[via Associated Press and CNN, images via Julien’s Auctions]
