![]() ![]() ![]() Often we are assured that a newly unearthed copy must be “really old,” because “my grandmother had it” or “it’s in a really old frame” or “it looks hand-written.” If your printing does not say who produced it, and it’s less than 20 inches tall, and it’s on “the crinkly paper,” it probably has very little value. And by very little, I mean you might be lucky to get $10 for it at a flea market. Sorry for the bad news. Probably hundreds of thousands were produced as souvenirs for the 1976 Bicentennial alone. These modern reproductions are very often printed on imitation parchment-dark brown, crinkly and brittle. They usually do not have any statement of responsibility: no notice of a printer, engraver or publication date. (One common exception was a freebie given away in huge numbers by the tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris in 1989, accompanied by facsimiles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights). And they are almost always much smaller than the 30 x 26-inch Stone printing. These mid-nineteenth century printings are a staple of any Americana catalogue, and usually bring between a few hundred and a couple thousand. A 1989 article by John Bidwell called American History in Image and Text is still the best effort to describe and catalog all of these broadside printings. Sometimes we’ll see an artistic manuscript rendering, such as this particularly nice 1866 illustrated example from the Forbes Collection, above.Īfter 1900, the renderings grew less artistic, and tended to just copy the 1823 Stone facsimile. ![]() Sold November 25, 2014, in Printed & Manuscript Americana for $1,875. Our Book Department Director and Americana Specialist, Rick Stattler, touches on the various printings, the differences between them, and what makes a copy valuable.ĭ.T. When looking to consign or collect a copy of the Declaration there are a few things to keep in mind. It was a typeset document, not a facsimile, and did not list all of the signers. At the bottom, it reads “Philadelphia: Printed by John Dunlap.” No other copies have been spotted at auction since 2000, when one sold for more than eight million dollars. Other very early broadside and newspaper printings have topped a million. More commonly seen are British magazine printings from 1776, which usually sell in the $1000 range. The most valuable printing of the Declaration of Independence is the first, a broadside printed on July 4 or 5, 1776. Probably the most common question we get in the Americana department is “I found an original copy of the Declaration of Independence-is it worth anything?” The short answer: it’s worth somewhere between zero and ten million dollars. But very likely zero. ![]()
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