ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) – A rare copy of the U.S. Constitution printed 237 years ago and sent to the states for ratification sold for $9 million at an auction in North Carolina Thursday night. It was done.
Blank Auctions sold the document, the only copy of its kind believed to be in private hands, in a private auction. The buyer’s name was not immediately released.
Bidding took just over seven minutes and was placed primarily over the phone in $50,000 increments. There was a pause at $8.5 million, then another pause after someone bid $9 million over the phone.
“Just a second or two more. Just a little taste of what’s being sold here for nine million,” said auctioneer and document owner Andrew Blank.
Blank was grateful. The auction was originally scheduled for September 28, but was postponed after Hurricane Helen caused devastation in Asheville and throughout western North Carolina.
“It’s an honor to be able to do it here. It’s been quite a journey,” Blank said.
This copy was printed after the Constitutional Convention finished drafting a framework for the national government in 1787, and was sent to Congress in the incompetent first American government under the Articles of Confederation, and sent to each state for popular ratification. I was asked to send it. .
This is one of about 100 copies printed by Charles Thomson, the secretary of that parliament. Only eight are known to still exist, and the remaining seven are publicly owned.
Mr. Thomson likely signed two copies for each of the original 13 states, effectively certifying the states.
It is unclear what happened to the documents auctioned Thursday between Mr. Thompson’s signature and 2022.
Two years ago, land once owned by Samuel Johnston was cleared in Edenton, eastern North Carolina. He served as governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789, overseeing the state convention that ratified the Constitution in his final year in office.
This copy was found in a long-neglected room piled high with old chairs and dusty bookcases, before Johnston’s old house was saved, and a stubby two-drawer drawer with a can of stain on top. was found inside a metal file cabinet. The document was a wide sheet that could be folded once like a book.
Large sheets printed on the front and back contain the Constitution as well as a letter from George Washington requesting ratification. He acknowledged that the long-term health of the country required compromises and that states would have to give up certain rights they had enjoyed.
Copies of the Constitution weren’t the only seven-figure purchases Thursday. A watermarked first draft of the 1776 Articles of Confederation was sold for $1 million.
Also sold for $85,000 was the Journal of the 1788 North Carolina Convention held in Hillsboro, where delegates spent two weeks debating whether ratifying the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government rather than the states. .
Auctioneers were unsure of the value the constitutional document would bring, as there were few comparables to it. Copies of the Constitution sent to each state were last sold in 1891 for $400.
In 2021, Sotheby’s in New York sold one of only 14 remaining copies of the Constitution printed for delegates to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention for $43.2 million, a record price for a book or document. It’s a thing.
