Sotheby’s is offering another extremely rare print of the Constitution at a special live sale on November 13. When Sotheby’s put up one of the last copies of the original printing of the United States Constitution for auction in November last year, it garnered worldwide interest and brought in a record-breaking $43.2 million.
When cryptocurrency enthusiasts launched ConstitutionDAO in 2021 with the intention of crowdsourcing a winning offer for the valuable document, the sale of the document quickly turned into a media circus. They claimed they planned to give the paper to the public by some unspecified method.
On the day of the auction, there was a bidding war, and while the DAO raised a phenomenal $40 million (far beyond the forecast of $15 million in the document), Ken Griffin placed the highest bid. Griffin founded the hedge fund Citadel and is a significant Republican contributor. The document is presently on display at the “We the People: The Radical Notion of Democracy” exhibition at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
The Constitution that will be auctioned off this month last changed hands 125 years ago when Adrian Van Sinderen, who would go on to become a well-known rare book collector, received it as a gift. The paper is worth between $20 and $30 million.
It is one of the 13 copies from the original 500 copies of the Constitution that are still in existence. The other copies are kept at government buildings.
