Steve Jobs' battered Seiko watch from iconic Mac photo fetches $42,000 - CNET

Photos from this 1984 shoot resurfaced to make the cover of a special commemorative issue of Time magazine after Jobs' death in 2011.
Heritage Auctions/Norman Seeff

Steve Jobs' "reality distortion field" helped propel an empire, but it couldn't keep a leather wristwatch band from showing some serious wear. Even in "heavily wo condition," however, the Seiko wristwatch that Jobs wore in a 1984 photo shoot with the original Macintosh still fetched $42,500 in an online auction Saturday.

The watch was just one of a handful of personal items consigned by Jobs' longtime house manager Mark Sheff for the auction held by Heritage Auctions. A pair of Jobs' equally battered Birkenstock sandals sold for $2,750, one of his signature black turtlenecks with the Next logo on the front went for $7,500, and a lot including two of Jobs' Next business cards, a pen with an Apple logo and a postal service retu receipt signed by the late Apple CEO gaered a wiing bid of $16,250.

The watch is perhaps best known for making an appearance on a 2011 special issue of Time magazine commemorating Jobs' life after his death from cancer.

This lot sold for over $16,000 at auction.
Heritage Auctions

Amazingly, the auction could indicate that the market for Jobs memorabilia has cooled off a little bit from the days when original Apple 1 computers were fetching well in excess of half a million dollars and a single legal document signed by Jobs was auctioned for over $40,000.

Apparently you can put a price on distorting reality.