A copy of the US Constitution hidden for decades in a North Carolina filing cabinet has sold at auction for $9 million this week.
The sale, at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina was postponed from its original September schedule by Hurricane Helene.
The wait didn’t put off bidders on the 237-year-old document that had reached its $1-million reserve well before the live sale, and was heading upwards in the hours leading to Thursday evening’s auction.
The document was printed in 1787 and is a ratification copy of the US’s founding document. These were sent around the states to be voted on and agreed. It was sold with a letter from George Washington asking for the vote to be carried.
This copy was signed by the secretary of the US Congress, Charles Thomson. It is believed that there are only eight such copies surviving, and seven are accounted for in public institutions. The last auction sale was in 1891, and it made $400.
Charles Thomson signed the copy of the constitution before it was sent to the states to be ratified.
This copy was probably in the custody of Samuel Johnston, the governor of North Carolina as the US was founded. It was found in a filing cabinet in 2022 in a property he owned. The same home had previously yielded a copy of the Declaration of Independence that realised $412,500 at auction in 1983.
The item attracted 62 bids, with the live sale taking seven minutes to shoot up to $9 million (£7 million) in $50,000 increments.
The same sale also saw the $1-million sale of a copy of the Articles of Confederation, the 1777 document that was the first formal government document of the independent 13 states.
Original US founding documents are extremely rare and very highly valued. The world record for a document sold at auction is the $43.2 million paid in 2022 by hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin for one of the 13 original copies of the constitution.
