Later this month, Sotheby’s will celebrate the anniversary of the United States’ founding by selling early copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Together, the documents could sell for up to $8 million.
The June 26 sale will be a live, standalone auction in New York City. The copy of the Declaration of Independence is the priciest piece up for grabs, with a high estimate of $5 million. Sotheby’s says that it is one of just five known printings of its kind, and the only one of these five in a private collection.
The early version of the Declaration appeared in the July 11, 1776, issue of the New-York Journal, a week after the document’s initial publication by printer John Dunlap on the evening of July 4. Presciently, publisher John Holt dedicated an entire page to the Declaration, knowing that people would want to keep a copy of the now-historic document.
As the official printer of the Continental Congress, Dunlap published the original editions of the Constitution and the Declaration. The auction house’s copy of the Constitution also comes from Dunlap, who dedicated all four pages of the September 19, 1787, edition of the Pennsylvania Packet to the historic document and its resolutions.
This is the first time the Packet copy of the Constitution (worth up to an estimated $1 million) has hit the auction block in more than three decades. The Packet printing was the first time members of the public had the chance to read the ratified Constitution for themselves.
The version of the Bill of Rights up for auction is a rare broadside edition dated to 1789. It was among the 100 copies used by the Pennsylvania General Assembly to debate the first amendments to the Constitution.
In addition to these three founding documents, the auction house will also be selling a 1790 broadside from Rhode Island, the U.S.’s smallest state and the only one that didn’t send any delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
For those hoping to view these historic papers in person, Sotheby’s will be exhibiting all four documents in New York from June 21 to 25.
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