Two years after the only known private copy of the U.S. Constitution printed by Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, was discovered in a filing cabinet in a North Carolina home, the document was sold at auction for $9 million.
Until 2022, this 237-year-old document sat gathering dust in a metal file cabinet beneath a tin of dirt in a long-forgotten storage room in the house. .
This house in Edenton, North Carolina, was once owned by Samuel Johnston, the state’s governor from 1787 to 1789, but is now vacant land. It is not clear how he was brought into the Cabinet in the first place.
Thomson printed approximately 100 copies of the Constitution during the existence of the Continental Congress, but only eight are known to survive, seven of which are in public ownership.
On this day in history, August 10, 1776, the Declaration of Independence arrives in London.
A copy of the 1787 U.S. Constitution that sold for $9 million is on display at Blank Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
“This is the point of contact between the government and the people. The ‘We the people’ in the preamble is the moment when the government is asking the people to empower themselves,” auctioneer Andrew Blank, who owns Blank Auctions, previously said. He told The Paper. Associated Press.
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He said it took just seven minutes for the document to reach its final bid of $9 million on Thursday, with most of the bids placed over the phone in $500,000 increments.
A portion of the 1787 U.S. Constitution that sold for $9 million is displayed on a blank auction screen. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
“We get calls every week from people who think they have the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address, but most of the time it’s just a replica. But every once in a while, something important is discovered,” says History. Seth Kahler, a document appraiser, told The Theatre. Associated Press before the auction. “This is a whole other level of importance.”
This document is 237 years old. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins, File)
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“It’s an honor to be able to get it here,” Blank said of the document, which was scheduled to be auctioned in late September but was postponed until Thursday due to Hurricane Helen. “It was a pretty tough sell.” Ta.
This document was printed in 1787 after the Constitutional Convention, where the Constitution and the framework of American government were drafted. It was then sent to Congress for ratification by each state.
