Rare 1787 Copy of US Constitution up for Auction, Could Be Worth Millions

An 1787 copy of the US Constitution that will be put up for auction on Sept. 28, 2024, is shown at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina, on Thursday, Sept. 5. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
An 1787 copy of the US Constitution that will be put up for auction on Sept. 28, 2024, is shown at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina, on Thursday, Sept. 5. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
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Rare 1787 Copy of US Constitution up for Auction, Could Be Worth Millions

An 1787 copy of the US Constitution that will be put up for auction on Sept. 28, 2024, is shown at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina, on Thursday, Sept. 5. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
An 1787 copy of the US Constitution that will be put up for auction on Sept. 28, 2024, is shown at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina, on Thursday, Sept. 5. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)

Historical document appraiser and collector Seth Kaller spreads a broad sheet of paper across a desk. It's in good enough condition that he can handle it, carefully, with clean, bare hands. There are just a few creases and tiny discolorations, even though it's just a few weeks shy of 237 years old and has spent who knows how long inside a filing cabinet in North Carolina.

At the top of the first page are familiar words but in regular type instead of the sweeping Gothic script we're used to seeing: "WE, the People ..."

And the people will get a chance to bid for this copy of the US Constitution — the only of its type thought to be in private hands — at a sale by Brunk Auctions on Sept. 28 in Asheville, North Carolina.

The minimum bid for the auction is $1 million. There is no minimum price that must be reached.

This copy was printed after the Constitutional Convention approved the proposed framework of the nation's government in 1787 and it was ratified by the Congress of the ineffective first American government under the Articles of Confederation.

It's one of about 100 copies printed by the secretary of that Congress, Charles Thomson. Just eight are known to still exist and the other seven are publicly owned.

Thomson likely signed two copies for each of the original 13 states, essentially certifying them. They were sent to special ratifying conventions, where representatives, all white and male, wrangled for months before accepting the structure of the United States government that continues today.

"This is the point of connection between the government and the people. The Preamble — 'we the people' — this is the moment the government is asking the people to empower them," auctioneer Andrew Brunk said.

What happened to the document up for auction between Thomson's signature and 2022 isn't known.

Two years ago, a property was being cleared out in Edenton in eastern North Carolina that was once owned by Samuel Johnston. He was the governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789 and he oversaw the state convention during his last year in office that ratified the Constitution.

The copy was found inside a squat, two-drawer metal filing cabinet with a can of stain on top, in a long-neglected room piled high with old chairs and a dusty book case, before the old Johnston house was preserved. The document was a broad sheet that could be folded one time like a book.

"I get calls every week from people who think they have a Declaration of Independence or a Gettysburg Address and most of the time it is just a replica, but every so often something important gets found," said Kaller, who appraises, buys and sells historic documents.

"This is a whole other level of importance," he added.

Along with the Constitution on the broad sheet printed front and back is a letter from George Washington asking for ratification. He acknowledged there will have to be compromise and that rights the states enjoyed will have to be given up for the nation's long-term health.

"To secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each and yet provide for the interest and safety for all — individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest," wrote the man who would become the first US president.

Brunk isn't sure what the document might go for because there is so little to compare it to. The last time a copy of the Constitution like this sold was for $400 in 1891. In 2021, Sotheby's of New York sold one of only 13 remaining copies of the Constitution printed for the Continental Congress and delegates to the Constitutional Convention for $43.2 million, a record for a book or document.

But that document was mostly for internal use and debate by the Founding Fathers. The copy being sold later this month was one meant to be sent to people all around the country to review and decide if that's how they wanted to be governed, connecting the writers of the Constitution to the people in the states who would provide its power and legitimacy.

There are other items up for auction in Asheville including a 1776 first draft of the Articles of Confederation and a 1788 Journal of the Convention of North Carolina at Hillsborough where representatives spent two weeks debating if ratifying the Constitution would put too much power with the nation instead of the states.



Han Kang Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

10 October 2024, Berlin: A customer in the bookstore Dussmann das Kulturkaufhaus holds a book by 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang from South Korea. Photo: Sebastian Gollnow/dpa
10 October 2024, Berlin: A customer in the bookstore Dussmann das Kulturkaufhaus holds a book by 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang from South Korea. Photo: Sebastian Gollnow/dpa
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Han Kang Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

10 October 2024, Berlin: A customer in the bookstore Dussmann das Kulturkaufhaus holds a book by 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang from South Korea. Photo: Sebastian Gollnow/dpa
10 October 2024, Berlin: A customer in the bookstore Dussmann das Kulturkaufhaus holds a book by 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang from South Korea. Photo: Sebastian Gollnow/dpa

South Korean poet and novelist Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for a poetic and unsettling body of work that the Nobel committee said “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
A slow-burning international literary star who has won multiple awards in South Korea and Europe, Han is the first Asian woman and the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel literature prize. She was awarded for books, including “The Vegetarian” and “Human Acts," that explore the pain of being human and the scars of Korea's turbulent history.
Nobel literature committee member Anna-Karin Palm said Han writes about “trauma, pain and loss,” whether individual or collective, “with the same compassion and care.”
“And this, I think, is something that is quite remarkable,” The Associated Press quoted Palm as saying.
Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson praised Han’s “empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters.
“She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead,” Olsson said.
Han is the second South Korean national to win a Nobel Prize. Late former President Kim Dae-jung won the peace prize in 2000 for his efforts to restore democracy in South Korea during the country’s previous military rule and improve relations with war-divided rival North Korea.
Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy that awards the prize, said he spoke to the author and surprised her with the news.
“She was having an ordinary day, it seems, had just finished supper with her son,” he said. “She wasn’t really prepared for this.”
Han wins the Nobel at a time of growing global influence of South Korean culture, which in recent years has included the success of films like director Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning “ Parasite,” the Netflix survival drama “Squid Game” and the worldwide fame of K-pop groups like BTS and BLACKPINK.
Han, 53, won the International Booker Prize for fiction translated into English in 2016 for “The Vegetarian,” an unsettling novel in which a woman’s decision to stop eating meat has devastating consequences.
Accepting that award, Han said writing novels “is a way of questioning for me.”
“I just try to complete my questions through the process of my writing and I try to stay in the questions, sometimes painful, sometimes — well — sometimes demanding,” she said.
With “The Vegetarian,” she said, ”I wanted to question about being human and I wanted to describe a woman who desperately didn’t want to belong to the human race any longer."
Han made her publishing debut as a poet in 1993; her first short story collection was published in 1995 and her first novel, “Black Deer,” in 1998.
Works translated into English include “Greek Lessons” — about the relationship between a woman who can no longer speak and a teacher who is losing his sight — “Human Acts” and “The White Book,” a poetic novel that draws on the death of Han’s older sister shortly after birth. “The White Book” was an International Booker Prize finalist in 2018.
“Human Acts” — which Olsson, the Nobel committee chair, called a work of “witness literature” — is based on the real-life killing of pro-democracy protesters in Han’s home city of Gwangju in 1980. The book won Italy’s Malaparte Prize in 2017.
Her most recent novel, “We Do Not Part,” is due to be published in English next year. It also confronts a chapter in South Korea's 20th-century history, which saw the country endure war, the division of the Korean peninsula and dictatorship. The novel deals with a 1948-1949 uprising on Jeju, an island south of the Korean mainland in which thousands of people were killed.
Anders Karlsson, a lecturer at London's School of Oriental and African Studies who has translated Han into Swedish, said he was “overjoyed” at the Nobel accolade.
He said Han's “poignant, condensed” prose is able to describe “difficult and dark passages in South Korean history ... in quite open and inviting language that engages and does not deter the reader.”
The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers of style-heavy, story-light prose. It has also been male-dominated — Han is only the 18th woman among its 120 laureates.