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Elon Musk’s college friend has raised $165,000 by auctioning off personal items and photos from their time together to pay for her stepson’s college tuition.
Jennifer Gwynne, 48, of South Carolina, hung up a birthday card from the Tesla billionaire – in which he calls her “Boo-Boo” – that sold for $16,643, a dorm photo of Musk that was upside down for $21,889 and a 14k- gold necklace that Musk donated to her in 1994 for $51,008.
Gwynne also sold 18 separate photos of her and Musk during their college sweetheart at the University of Pennsylvania, including photos of her and Musk dining out and hanging out with friends.
The couple dated for a year in 1994, when they were both resident counselors in the same dorm. Musk broke it off after he graduated and moved to California, where keeping in touch over the phone seemed like a “waste of time” to him, according to Gwynne.
“We broke up just before he started taking over the world,” Gwynne said.
A photo from May 1995 shows Musk and Gwynne smiling sweetly on a bench outside the school’s dorm rooms. It sold for $2,733.
Jennifer Gwynne, 48, (pictured) of South Carolina posted personal items and photos from her relationship with Elon Musk in the mid-1990s, which raised $165,000 in an auction, which she said went toward her stepson’s tuition
The couple in May 1995, not long before moving to California and the romance ended – this photo sold for $2,733
After leaving UPenn in 1995, Musk went to Stanford – but only for two days. Musk recently posted this photo – which sold for $9,375 – as his Twitter profile picture
Musk with friends over dinner as a baby face student
The photo was taken by Musk’s mother, Maye, according to the auction house RR Auction. She took the photo during a trip to visit her son in Philadelphia.
“As I remember, the three of us were planning to drive to NYC to see the musical ‘Tommy’. The whole trip was a nice gift from Maye,” Gwynne told the auction company.
“But as we were getting ready to leave, something broke in Elon’s car. So we ended up spending about five hours in an auto parts store so Elon could fix the problem himself. He did. We arrived in NYC and had a great time.’
Another photo of Musk in a brown leather jacket behind the wheel of a BMW, poorly lit and out of focus, sold for $1,155.
“We were headed to Pulp Fiction on one of our first off-campus dates,” Gwynne said on the auction house’s website.
Though the tech titan and his college sweetheart haven’t spoken to each other since they split up 27 years ago, Musk has updated his Twitter profile picture to one of his being auctioned off in an apparent show of support.
The photo shows a 1994 23-year-old Musk in a Judge Dredd t-shirt in a fourth-floor study room in one of the Quad Towers of the University of Pennsylvania. It sold for $9,375.
Gwynne came up with the idea of auctioning the photos and items—which she’d carefully preserved for years—after reading about a trial paper auction that Musk had rated with a simple “EM.”
She realized that the mementos she had in her possession were of much more value to fans of the world’s richest man.
Love’s Young Dream: Elon and Jennifer Together in 1994. She Said He Just Wanted Someone to “Be With Him” and “Support Him”
“He was very intense… very focused. Even then he was talking about electric cars,” Jennifer says today of her famous first love
“We were physical when we needed to be… but there was no hand-holding or anything like that,” she says. This photo sold for $1,969
Musk with one of the group’s college friends. Jennifer talks fondly about their road trips and times ‘hanging out’ in their dorm room
Gwynne, who is now married with a stepson and lives in South Carolina, told DailyMail.com that their romance was “sweet,” but lacked affection or “PDA” — because Elon was largely opposed to both.
They broke up when he moved to Palo Alto in 1995, around the same time he got serious with his first wife, Justine, who he’d also seen behind her back, she says.
“We met in the fall of 1994. I was a junior and he was a senior… we were in the same dorm and we worked together.
“His shy nature attracted me at first . . . he was my type,” Gwynne said. She described Musk as “sweet, kind, smart and endearing.”
Then, a budding entrepreneur bursting with ambition and ideas, she said she “always knew” he was “going places.”
‘He was very intense, very focused on his studies. Back then, he was always talking about electric cars… he was definitely going somewhere. He just saw school as a springboard.’
The photos show the couple on road trips, drinking champagne and hanging out with friends.
Elon joked with friends when he was with UPenn in the early 1990s – these photos sold for a whopping $11,794
Elon “always went somewhere,” says Jennifer, who said he seemed to see school as a “stepping stone” to where he really wanted to be
Into town and dressed: A young Elon Musk dressed for a black tie event, which sold for $6,336, and right, with some Minute Maid OJ
In some, Elon seems bent on an early computer. In others, he is dressed in black tie for formal college events.
While resisting “PDA,” Gwynne reveals that he won her over with a Chinese takeout from a local off-campus restaurant called Beijing.
“When he’s courting you, you know he’s interested, but he wasn’t extremely affectionate.
“We were physical when we needed to be… but there was no hand-holding or anything like that. He liked to be together. He just liked having someone with him, someone to support him.’
She describes visiting his mother Maye – an “amazing and stunning woman” – when she lived in Toronto, as well as meeting Elon’s siblings Kimbal and Tosca.
‘[Maye] was wonderful, very sweet, very gracious and really engaged me in conversations. She was great.
“She came to Philadelphia at the end of the school year and took us to New York to see Tommy on Broadway.”
She never met his father, Errol, but remembers Elon telling her they didn’t get along.