Steve Jobs’ Birkenstocks sandals are going up for auction today. The initial price was $15,000 and right now, after two bids, they are at $22,5000. Julien’s Auctions, the auction house, expects them to be paid between $60,000 and $80,000. The bidder who wins the auction will also receive a free NFT: a 360º digital representation of the sandals.
It is the brown suede Arizona model that Jobs threw away. Apparently, these Birkenstocks were worn by the tech guru in the ’70s and ’80s. Jobs got rid of them, but Mark Sheff, a chef who ran one of Jobs’ properties in California, saved them from ending up. in a landfill. “We kept some things, shared some with landscapers and our friends, and sold some at Goodwill. The collection we ended up with is pretty random,” the cook told Yahoo in 2016.
The shoes of the day to day: they are very used
And they are especially relevant because Jobs used these sandals at key moments in the Cupertino company. According to partners and friends, the founder of Apple felt free wearing these shoes. In fact, you can clearly see that the sandals are very worn.
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From the auction house they are proud that they are in this condition. Julien’s Auctions states that “the cork and jute insole retains the imprint of Steve Jobs’s feet”, and that the sandal’s rubber soles “show great wear” due to Jobs wearing them on a daily basis.
Whoever wants these sandals will have to push hard
Julien’s Auction
Chrisann Brennan, Jobs’s ex-partner and the mother of his first daughter, has even said in an interview with Vogue that the Birkenstocks were part of Jobs’ uniform. “He would never make or buy anything just to stand out from the crowd. He was just convinced of the cleverness and practicality of the design and the comfort of wearing it. And with the Birkenstocks, he didn’t feel like a businessman, so he had the freedom to think creatively,” Brennan told the fashion magazine.
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A collector’s item that has traveled around the world
As the Julien’s Auctions website indicates, the sandals have become something of a historical object. They have been part of several exhibitions, including, among others, the Salone del Mobile in Milan (Italy) in 2017, the Birkenstock headquarters in Rahms (Germany) in 2017, the first Birkenstock store in the United States in SoHo (New York ), a furniture fair in Cologne (Germany), Zeit Event Berlin in 2018 and, more recently, at the Wurttemberg History Museum in Stuttgart (Germany).
This is not the first time that the sandals worn by Jobs have moved money. In 2016 they were already sold to an anonymous buyer for $3,400. However, the benefit this time is expected to be much higher.
