‘Follow the gourd!’ – Steve Jobs sandals take on religious significance

The bizarre cult of Steve Jobs claimed another victim yesterday when an unnamed “collector” squandered US$220,000 (7.8 million baht) on a pair of Jobs’ dirty old sandals, the latest of Jobs’s relics to come under the hammer.

The “well used” brown suede Birkenstocks dating to the mid-1970s set a record for the highest price ever paid for a pair of sandals, Julien’s Auctions said Sunday.

The listing on the auction house website said…

“The cork and jute footbed retains the imprint of Steve Jobs’ feet, which had been shaped after years of use.”

The California house where Steve Jobs co-founded Apple is a historical site, and now the sandals he wore creeping around the building also have some historical status.

People have been fooled into buying famous people’s trash for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

In the Middle Ages there was a great deal of money to be made from the body parts, bodily fluids and possessions of “saints,” and it seems that nothing much has changed. Measures taken against the trade by the Church were not very effective, mostly because the church itself was behind the trade.

Now, the same superstitions and the same vested interests are conspiring to turn trash into treasure. Nothing will stop devotees from trying to get a piece of the venerable Jobs’ trash.

In October 2014, an Apple-1 computer sold for US$905,000, (32 million baht) making it the world’s most valuable relic from the Computer Age, as it should be. It is part of the history of science. What price is a tissue containing some of Steve’s sacred snot?

The sandals were expected to bring $60,000 (210,000 baht), but the final sale price with an accompanying NFT – a bargain if ever there was one – was US$218,750 (7.8 million baht). The shame-faced podophile was, understandably, not named.

Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 at Jobs’ parents’ house in Los Altos, California. In 2013, the property was named a historic landmark by the Los Altos Historical Commission.

Jobs died in 2011 from complications of pancreatic cancer.