Sam Amico
Nothing screams office attire like Birkenstocks, especially when you run the company. OK, maybe there are better things to wear to the office. But when you were Steve Jobs, you could wear what you wanted. And jobs did indeed sometimes wear Birkenstocks.
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So an auction house did the natural thing and put them up for sale — with someone paying a cool $218,750 for the worn-out footwear.
But these weren’t just any Birkenstocks. Per the auction house, Jobs sported them in the 1970s and ’80s during “many pivotal moments in Apple’s history.”
The shoes arrived at the auction via Mark Sheff, who managed Jobs’ Albany, Calif., estate in the 1980s. The winning bidder chose to remain anonymous, though it was revealed Jobs; sandals were sold to a room at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square.
Steve Jobs’ Old Birkenstocks Sell For $218,750 at Auction
Julien’s Auctions executive director Martin Nolan told NPR that Jobs’ Birkenstocks fetched a record price for footwear. At least it did for that auction house.
Others have sold for considerably higher bids — including Michael Jordan’s game-worn Nike Air Ships, which once went for $1.47 million. And the Nikes worn by Kanye West at the 2008 Grammy’s went for $1.8 million last year.
But those were athletic shoes. These are Birkenstocks. They might even smell — or as Nolan told NPR, they “do smell … of success.”
Jobs, who founded Apple, died in October 2011 at the age of 56. The cause was respiratory arrest brought on by pancreatic cancer.
