Millions forecast for Washington papers

WASHINGTON — George Washington’s 223year- old copies of the Constitution and Bill of Rights are expected to go for bids of $2 million to $3 million at auction next week.

The documents are bound in a book that contains notes in Washington’s handwriting, including notations of the responsibilities of the president. The book was displayed Tuesday in the nation’s capital. Christie’s auction house plans to offer the documents to bidders on June 22 in New York.

Thomas Lecky of Christie’s called the book “certainly on the one hand of great things” to have passed through the auction house in his time. This copy of the Constitution, bound by Thomas Allen of New York in 1789, was one of a set of three. The other two copies went to President Thomas Jefferson and John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Washington’s documents rank, Lecky said, among the more notable items previously auctioned by Christie’s, such as one of Shakespeare’s first folios, Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 victory speech, and three copies of John James Audubon’s “Birds of America.”

The documents that are the foundation for the country’s laws were thick and largely unmarked, save for Washington’s own notes, scribbled in pencil in the margins. Most of the notes showed sections bracketed off and marked “president,” indicating the duties and responsibilities Washington saw as his own.

Washington also signed his name on the title page, a sprawling line in the top right corner.

The documents are unique, Lecky said, because Washington rarely wrote in the margins of his volumes.

The estimated bid for the volume is based on the final bid for a 1787 letter that Washington wrote about the Constitution. Christie’s sold it in 2009 for $3.2 million.