Sotheby’s to auction rare first print of US Constitution

An extremely rare official first-edition printed copy of the US Constitution will be put up for bid by Sotheby’s in mid-November, the auction house said on Friday. 

Announcing the upcoming sale of the document on the 234th anniversary of its signing by delegates to the Constitutional Convention, Sotheby’s estimated its value at $15 million to $20 million. 

“It’s the official printing, the first printing of the final text of the United States Constitution done probably on the evening of the 16th of September, 1787, only for the use of the delegates to the Continental Convention and for the use of the Congress of the United States,” said Sotheby’s Senior Specialist for Books and Manuscripts, Selby Kiffer. 

“This is the only one that is not in a permanent institutional collection.” 

It last sold for $165,000 in 1988, when it was acquired by the late S. Howard Goldman, a New York real estate developer and private collector of American autographs, historical documents and manuscripts. His wife, Dorothy Tapper Goldman, is offering it for sale, with all proceeds going to the charitable foundation established in her name to further the public’s understanding of democracy, the auction house said. 

Copies from that first printing, bearing no signatures and believed to have originally numbered about 500, were furnished to delegates of the Constitutional Convention. Two surviving copies are housed at the Library of Congress. 

The Constitution’s first printing is considerably rarer than even the first edition of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Sotheby’s said. 

 

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