21/07/2026
Elon musk's name is enough to make money 🤑 really.
FROM COLLEGE ROMANCE TO $165,000+ AUCTION: Inside Elon Musk’s Rare University Memorabilia Sale 💸📸
Ever wonder what the world's richest man was like before PayPal, Tesla, or SpaceX? In September 2022, a massive vault of never-before-seen history went public when Elon Musk’s college girlfriend, Jennifer Gwynne, auctioned off their private relationship mementos for a staggering $165,265.
Gwynne and Musk dated for about a year between 1994 and 1995 while they were both students at the University of Pennsylvania, living and studying in the Spruce Street dorms. Decades later, Gwynne decided to sell the collection through Boston-based RR Auction to help fund her stepson’s college tuition.
The auction caught so much attention that Musk himself temporarily changed his Twitter (now X) profile picture to one of the candid photos being sold.
🏆 The Highest-Selling Items:
- The $51,000 Emerald Necklace: The top-selling item was a 14-karat gold necklace featuring a green emerald. The stone came from a Zambian emerald mine owned by Elon’s father, Errol Musk. Elon gifted it to Jennifer as a birthday present in late 1994, though Jennifer noted he explicitly told her not to view it as a sentimental engagement token.
- The "Boo-Boo" Birthday Card ($16,643): A signed, handwritten birthday card from December 1994 where a young, smitten Elon wrote: “Happy Birthday, Jennifer (aka Boo-Boo), Love, Elon.”
- The $21,889 Computer Desk Photo: Out of 18 candid photographs sold, the highest-earning picture featured a 23-year-old Musk upside down, smiling, and working at his computer monitor in his UPenn dorm room. Other photos included him hanging out with friends, eating in the cafeteria, and cuddling with Gwynne.
According to Gwynne, even in his early twenties, Musk was intensely focused, brilliant, and visionary—often talking about electric cars and the future of technology long before his first company, Zip2, was ever founded. The relationship ultimately ended because Musk did not want a long-distance relationship when he moved out to Palo Alto, California, to pursue his graduate studies.