$400 may have been the actual high price, but if someone had purchased one share in '97 for $10, when it was $400 share, that person would have $1600 worth of Apple stock. This is due to the fact that the stock has split twice since he came back in the mid '90s: http://investor.apple.com/faq.cfm?FaqSetID=2
I had $10 back then, too, even though I was about 9. I remember thinking "the stock market seems interesting"... It's just cool to think that my $10 could've turned into $1600 with nothing but luck and patience.
"Back in Macworld Boston 1996, I bought one share of Apple stock at $16 and got a framed commemorative stock certificate. It went into a box when I moved later that year and I completely forgot about until I found it a couple of weeks ago. It's worth almost $1,000 now!"
Jobs left Apple right when they no longer needed him. He saved the company he founded, and now its the most valuable tech firm in the world, and will be the leader for at least the next decade.
If "Good to Great" were written today, I wonder what Jim Collins would have said about Apple (stock price increase was the basis for choosing good-to-great companies). Was Steve Jobs a Level 5 leader?
