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The National Archives
On October 17, 2024, a rare privately owned copy of
the U.S. Constitution was sold at auction by Brunks Auctions of Asheville,
North Carolina for $9 million. The final
bid far outstripped the reserve price of $1 million. The bidding lasted seven minutes and bids
came in at $500,000 intervals.
This rare artifact is
one of the 100 official copies printed in 1787 that were sent to state leaders
for review before being formally adopted, and is among only eight copies known
to exist today, and is the only one still in private hands. The document was sold to an anonymous bidder.
The almost 237 year old
document was found inside a battered filing cabinet in a long neglected storage
room on a property in Edenton, North Carolina once owned by the state’s first
governor Samuel Johnston. Johnston was
governor from 1787 to 1789, and oversaw the state convention that ratified the
Constitution. Also found with the copy
of the Constitution was an original letter from George Washington asking for
ratification!
