Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend from Penn got more than $165,000 for old relationship mementos

For most people, finding mementos saved from a past relationship can stir up bouts of nostalgia, pangs of embarrassment, or unexpected questions from one’s current partner.

But for Jennifer Gwynne, who recently pulled out items she saved from her time dating fellow University of Pennsylvania grad Elon Musk, those mementos stirred up $165,265.

Or, about .00007% of Musk’s estimated worth of $219 billion.

Gwynne auctioned her Musk memorabilia — including a signed card, an emerald necklace, and 18 photographs — online through RR Auction of Boston in a sale that began August 12 and closed Wednesday night.

As the 9 p.m. closing time drew near, Gwynne simulcast the online auction on her T.V. and watched with her family as the bids quickly rose.

“My mouth was hung open all night. I’m still shocked,” Gwynne said Thursday morning. “This is absolutely beyond anything I dreamed.”

The single highest bid for an item was $51,008 for a necklace Musk gave to Gwynne, which he said contained an emerald from his father’s mine in South Africa. A signed card from Musk, which had been leading the auction until the final hours, went for $16,643.

The rest of the bids were for photographs of Musk taken by Gwynne during their relationship.

“We put the pictures in there as fluff to bring people to the site, but I think the pictures were what people wanted,” she said. “The pictures just took off.”

The highest winning bid for a single photo was $21,889 for a picture of a Musk upside down in Gwynne’s dorm room at Penn. The lowest winning bid on an item was $1,155 for a photo of Musk in his car.

All winning bids include a 25% buyer’s fee that purchasers are required to pay to RR Auction house on top of their winning bids. With the buyer’s fees, the total of the winning bids came in around $132,000.

The auction house did not identify any of the buyers.

Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of RR Auction, said in a statement that he was “thrilled” by the auction’s success and the impact it will have on Gwynne.

“There is very little Musk-related material that has come up for auction, and we will no doubt be seeing more soon with the success of this sale,” he said.

In an interview with the Inquirer last week, Gwynne, who now lives in Columbia, S.C., with her husband and stepson, said she met Musk when the two were students and resident advisors at the University of Pennsylvania. They dated for about a year, from 1994 to 1995, and even took a road trip together to meet each other’s families.

Her Musk mementos offer a rare inside look at the world’s richest person, long before he held that title or created any of his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.

Gwynne decided to auction off her memorabilia after seeing a story about how a homework assignment graded by Musk while he was a teaching assistant at Penn’s Wharton School brought in $7,753 at auction last year.

She plans to use the proceeds to help fund her 13-year-old stepson’s college tuition one day. Gwynne said she’ll also make a donation to her favorite animal charity and her husband will get an update to a tattoo he’s been wanting for a while.

While Gwynne hasn’t heard from Musk about the auction, she did note that after the Inquirer and other outlets reported on it last week, Musk changed his Twitter profile picture to one of the photographs in the auction, of him in a Judge Dredd t-shirt. Gwynne said she almost fainted because the only copy of that picture was the one she put in the auction.

“He was giving a nod and giving his support and I truly appreciate it,” she said. “I have a lot of closure now. I am just so happy.”