An eBay seller has sold what they described as Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ badge, but that turned out to be a forged badge for Sherry Livingston, employee #10, according to a report by AppleInsider.
The fraudulent post was first spotted by Mastodon user Eric Vitiello, who initially thought the eBay listing was legit.
However, the details of the badge and the accompanying hand-drawn map of Apple’s office layout were then determined by another user to be fake.
“That’s not Sherry Livingston,” said Apple’s Chris Espinosa — employee #8 who is still with the company. Espinosa then created a list pointing out everything that was wrong with the forgery.
That’s not Sherry Livingston.
That wasn’t taken with a Polaroid with a flash.
The laminate dimensions are all wrong.
That’s a computer font, not an IBM Selectric Orator type ball.
That’s not my original sketch, which was on a National engineering pad.
Then Cabel Sasser, co-founder of Panic Inc., contacted the seller and detailed their exchange in his blog. The seller was inconsistent in their story of how they got their hands on the item but did have a German purchase receipt from 2001. Which also turned out to be fake. The blog entry makes for interesting reading.
Sadly, the exposure of the fraudulent item did not come in time to prevent someone from buying it, and the fake went for just over $1,000, including shipping.
There have been other fake Apple or Steve Jobs-related items that have gone up for sale in the past. In March 2022, what was believed to be an Atari job application filled out by Steve Jobs went up for auction on a memorabilia auction site, but was taken down before it was sold, as there were doubts concerning its provenance.
