Steve Jobs’ early-morning Mercedes garage chats left behind a $16k Apple card legacy
Published on Sep 28, 2025 at 9:09 AM (UTC+4)
by Molly Davidson
Last updated on Sep 24, 2025 at 3:58 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Emma Matthews
A handful of Steve Jobs’ old Apple business cards just sold for $16,643.
That’s not the surprising part.
What matters is where they came from – a San Jose Mercedes lot at sunrise.
Back then, the man who commanded boardrooms was just another gearhead, wandering rows of sedans before the city woke up.
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How casual chats turned into collector gold
In San Jose, one Mercedes salesman had a customer he never expected – Steve Jobs.
The Apple boss wasn’t prowling the lot for discounts or cutting deals.
Instead, he started showing up before sunrise, sometimes with family, to walk among the cars in peace.
One morning, the salesman finally approached him, ready to be waved away.
Instead, Jobs launched into conversation.
They talked powertrains, design, and the kind of details only an obsessive would notice.
He kept coming back, greeting the man warmly with a ‘good to see you again,’ before disappearing when the dealership filled with people.
Years later, that same salesman received an envelope from a colleague at the dealership.
No explanation, no note, just seven of Jobs’ Apple business cards tucked inside.
They spanned the years of his return to Apple.
Two carried the old rainbow logo with ‘Interim CEO’ under his name.
The latter five switched to the candy-colored iMac logos, double-sided with his new ‘iCEO’ title – even translated into Japanese on the back.
When the set finally went up at RR Auction this August, it wasn’t treated like office stationery.
It stood as Jobs’ quiet thank you for those early-morning Mercedes chats.
And that story is what helped drive the hammer price to $16,643.
Steve Jobs’ love affair with Mercedes and the car world beyond
Those early-morning chats on a Mercedes lot weren’t out of character for Jobs.
Cars were always part of his orbit.
He famously found a loophole in California law that let him swap into a fresh Mercedes SL55 AMG every six months so he could avoid license plates altogether.
It was equal parts obsessive and rebellious, and it became a long-running quirk of his public image.
But it wasn’t just Mercedes that drew him in.
Jobs also kept a Porsche 928 in his garage, and the car’s flowing curves made such an impression that he had the original Macintosh modeled after it.
The sports car’s design language ended up baked into Apple’s DNA, shaping not just computers but the whole philosophy of simplicity and precision.
From Mercedes mornings to Porsche design cues, cars were always baked into Jobs’ world.
And maybe that’s why a handful of Apple business cards slipped quietly to a salesman ended up carrying a story strong enough to fetch $16,643.
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Molly Davidson is a Junior Content Writer at Supercar Blondie. Based in Melbourne, she holds a double Bachelor’s degree in Arts/Law from Swinburne University and a Master’s of Writing and Publishing from RMIT. Molly has contributed to a range of magazines and journals, developing a strong interest in lifestyle and car news content. When she’s not writing, she’s spending quality time with her rescue English staffy, Boof.
