Sweating The Small Stuff: Sotheby’s Selling Original Steve Jobs Note About Atari Circuit Improvements

The auction house Sotheby’s is selling an official memo from Steve Jobs to Atari about improving the World Cup Football game. The pages – stamped and signed by Jobs himself – describe circuit diagrams and paddle layouts. Delightfully, the stamp says “All-One Farm Design” and features a Buddhist mantra, “gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svahdl.” As you do.

If you’re thinking of picking this up you’d best have about $10,000 to $15,000 handy – although bidding could get fierce. Quoth MacWorld:

The June 15th, 2012 auction features a 5 page memo sent to Atari employee Steve Bristow by Steve Jobs. This memo describes changes that could be made to Atari’s World Cup Soccer arcade game. These changes were designed to add play variety to the game and to extend the ‘shelf life’ for arcade operators. While the memo is typed on Atari letterhead, it also features a stamp imprinted with the name of Steve Job’s company at the time “All-One Farm Design” and the address of the Jobs family garage( and the birthplace of Apple Computer). The memo features a circuit diagram and a hand written addendum.

This is the earliest know documentation produced by Steve Jobs and predates the founding of Apple computer by almost two years. No other documents from Steve Jobs time at Atari are known to exist. Sotheby’s sold another Steve Jobs document in December, 2011 for $1.6 million.

If you’re really feeling spendy, you can plop down $180,000 on an original Apple I circuit board, presumably in mint condition. Get cracking and don’t forget: Sabbe satta sukhi hontu.

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