Elon Musk’s Ex-Girlfriend Auctions Mementos From Their College Romance

When your ex is the wealthiest man in the world, holding onto his stuff will become profitable. This is the case of Jennifer Gwynne, Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend, who is auctioning off mementos from her relationship with the Tesla founder.

She is auctioning a cache of photos and other memorabilia on the Boston-based platform RR Auction. Up for grabs are 18 candid photos capturing the billionaire’s youthful moments as a college student, a handwritten birthday card, and a gold necklace Musk gave to his then-girlfriend.

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Gwynne dated the billionaire in 1994 when the two were in their early 20s and studying at the University of Pennsylvania. She is auctioning these items from their one-year relationship to raise money for her stepson’s college tuition.

They both worked as resident advisers in a university dorm. Soon after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Musk started in a doctoral program at Stanford but dropped out to launch his first startup, Zip2.

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The glossy photos show the billionaire looking every bit the normal college student before his meteoric rise to success: goofing off in a dorm room, hanging out with his fellow resident advisers, and cuddling with his girlfriend.The item with the current highest bid is a signed birthday card, followed by a necklace gifted to Gwynne on her birthday.

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"Happy Birthday, Jennifer (aka, Boo-Boo), Love, Elon," reads the note. As of Sunday morning, the highest bid is almost $7,000. The card is expected to sell for more than $10,000, according to RR.

The gold necklace includes an emerald from the Zambian emerald mine owned by Musk's father Errol, a wealthy South African property developer and engineer."When we went to visit Elon's mother in Toronto during the Christmas break of 1994, Elon gave me both the small 'love, love, love' note and the necklace," said Gwynne in RR's statement.

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"His mom had a number of these necklaces in a case in her bedroom, and Elon told me they were from his father's emerald mine in South Africa — he pulled one from the case. And because I had not gotten him anything as a Christmas gift (and I felt very guilty about that), he said we would consider the necklace an early birthday present for me."

"I wore the necklace for a number of years on and off, but it's mostly been in my jewelry box for the last ten years (always reminding me of Elon, of course)."

The necklace also comes with two photos, one of Musk and Gwynne with Musk's mother, the model Maye Musk, and one of Musk and Gwynne at an end-of-the-year formal in 1995.

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Gwynne, now 48 and living in South Carolina, opened up about her relationship with Musk. She explained that their romance was “sweet” but wasn’t “extremely affectionate”.

The pair broke up when Musk moved to Palo Alto in 1995, around the same time he started dating his first wife, Justine Wilson, whom Gwynne claims he had been seeing behind her back.

“We met in the fall of 1994. I was a junior and he was a senior,” Gwynne told the outlet. “We were in the same dorm and we worked together.”

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“His shy nature attracted me at first,” she continued. “He used to be my type.”

“He was very intense, very focused on his studies. Back then he was always talking about electric cars,” Gwynne added. “He was definitely going somewhere. He just saw school as a stepping stone.”

Gwynne explained that she had resisted for years selling some of her keepsake items from Musk, but decided after seeing others make money off their mementos from the billionaire that “now’s the time”.

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“I’ve had these pictures and the notes for a long, long time,” she said. “But now I’m like, ‘Well the man cannot stay out of the headlines,’ so.”

There is also a one-dollar bill signed by the Tesla boss available for auction, which sits at $2,200 with 14 bids. The auction for each of the items listed will end on 14 September.