The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sotheby’s to put rare copy of Constitution up for auction in Nov.
A very special document will be auctioned off later this year: a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution.
Sotheby’s announced Sept. 17 — appropriately on Constitution Day — that in November it will put up for auction one of just 11 surviving copies of the Constitution from the official first printing produced for the delegates to the Constitutional Convention and for the Continental Congress. It’s the only copy that remains in private hands and has an estimate of $15 million to $20 million.
“This is the final text. The debate on what the Constitution would say was over with this document. The debate about whether the Constitution was going to be adopted was just beginning,” Selby Kiffer, an international senior specialist in Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts Department, told The Associated Press.
It will join about 80 constitutional and related documents up for auction by the venerable house.
It is Kiffer’s second time handling the rare document. He also spearheaded its auction in 1988. Back then, it went for just $165,000. “While it’s a lot of years later, and I’ve handled a lot of great things, and I’m more experienced, I have to say it’s just as exciting, if not a little bit more exciting, the second time around,” he said.
The document is from the collection of Dorothy Tapper, and proceeds from the sale of the collection will benefit The Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation, which is dedicated to furthering the understand
ing of U.S. democracy and how the acts of all citizens can make a difference.