Poor Ronald Wayne

He’s the guy who drew up the original Apple contract, which netted him 10% of Apple stock way back in 1976. Wayne quickly withdrew from the company and was paid a total of $2,300. You know the rest of the story: company’s profile goes up, stock goes bonkers, and everybody, even Mother, has an iPhone. Wayne kept the original contract, and auctioned it off in 1994. He made some cash, but nowhere near the billions his original shares would have been worth today.

Yesterday, Sotheby’s announced that the original contract went up for auction again. While it was expected to fetch around $150,000, it ended up going for a sweet $1.59 million.

Poor Ronald Wayne.