There is no documented evidence that Musk's family owned an emerald mine. The story traces to inconsistent anecdotes from his father, Errol Musk, who has given several conflicting versions and produced no ownership records or company filings; the documented account is that he bought a share of the output of mines in Zambia (not apartheid South Africa) for a few years. Biographer Walter Isaacson, who interviewed Errol directly, found no evidence of mine ownership, and Snopes rates the claim unproven. Musk's seed capital is fully traceable: he netted roughly $175–180 million from the 2002 sale of PayPal and reinvested it into SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity — then nearly went bankrupt in 2008. He did grow up in an affluent white South African family, but the specific "emerald-mine fortune built Tesla" claim is unsupported.