You won't believe how much a pair of old sandals belonging to Steve Jobs have sold for

Virgin Radio

17 Nov 2022, 12:24

We wish we could flog our old flip-flops for this amount of cash. Well, you can if your name's Steve Jobs. The Apple co-founder's old Birkenstocks from the 1970s and 80s have sold at auction for almost $220,000 (£185,000).

Kept hold of all this time by his former house manager, Mark Sheff, the sandals racked up the hefty bill at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills and have become the highest price paid for a pair.

The auction house said: “The cork and jute footbed retains the imprint of Steve Jobs’s feet, which had been shaped after years of use."

Expected to sell for an equally impressive $60,000 (£50,000), the final price, sold to an undisclosed buyer, was sold for $218,750 (£183,000), along with a non-fungible token (NFT).

According to executive director of Julien’s, Martin Nolan, the sandals had originally been sold for $2,000 (£1,600) at an auction in 2016 and were only saved from the bin because Jobs was going to throw them away.

Last year, a pair of Michael Jordan's Nike trainers worn during his rookie season with the Chicago Bulls sold for almost $1.5 million (£1.2 million) and a pair of Kanye West's Nike shoes he wore at the 2008 Grammy Awards went for $1.8 million (£1.5 million).

Here's how to listen to an artificial intelligence-generated podcast, in which the late Steve Jobs is interviewed by Joe Rogan.