An extremely rare printing of the Declaration of Independence has sold for $2.4 million at a New York auction this week.
The Goodspeed’s-Sang-Streeter copy of the Exeter Broadside was printed by Robert Luist Fowle in the New Hampshire town of Exeter in July 1776.
Sotheby’s sold the document on Friday, January 24 in a single-lot sale with an estimate of $2 million to $4 million.
Early copies of the United States’ founding documents are extremely rare and highly valuable.
The Declaration of Independence was completed by hand and by committee. When, on July 4, 1776, it was finally approved by the rebellious Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia it was immediately printed by John Dunlap, the congress’s official printer.
Copies shot off Dunlap’s presses. But as word spread through the 13 colonies reprints were needed. Some were in newspapers. Others were printed, like this one, as a broadside, a large, single-sided document meant to be posted up and read in public.
The Exeter Broadside includes a spelling mistake, adding a P to Charles Thom[p]son’s name. Image courtesy Sotheby’s.
Very few of these early printings survive.
Robert Luist Fowle (probably a British loyalist personally) published the declaration in his New Hamshire Gazette or Exeter Morning Chronicle and almost certainly printed the document Sotheby’s sold.
Sotheby’s said: “We are aware of the existence of a total of ten copies of this broadside, two of which are known in the first state. Since Bartlett’s copy was sold more than a century ago, only two other copies of Fowle’s printing have appeared at auction.”
This copy’s previous owners include some of the United States’ most famous document collections: the Streeter Collection (of Thomas W Streeter), and Philip and Elsie Sang’s Sang Collection.
In July 2022, a copy of the official printing of the Declaration for the state of Massachusetts was auctioned for $2.2 million. Last June, a New York broadside version sold for $3.4 million.
In 2000, a copy of the Dunlap print sold for $8.14m (£5m), the most valuable copy thus far.
This copy realised under $1 million just four years ago, showing an explosive growth in the market for these rare and historically significant documents.
