A rare copy of the American Constitution forgotten in a filing cabinet sold Thursday for a hammer price of $9 million, Andrew Brunk, the owner of the auction house handling the sale, confirmed to CBS News.
Originally scheduled to be auctioned on September 28 in Asheville, North Carolina by Brunk Auctions, the sale was delayed due to Hurricane Helene.
It took just seven minutes to land the final sale price, with offers at intervals of $500,000. Most of the bids – about 10 – were placed by telephone, two bids were placed online and one buyer was present in person at the auction in North Carolina, Brunk said.
Brunk said the final price including buyer’s premium was $11,070,000 – and the buyer remained anonymous.
“To go from a filing cabinet in Edenton, North Carolina, to being sold for $11 million is quite a journey,” Brunk said.
Brunk Auctions
The nearly 237-year-old document was found in a squat, nondescript metal filing cabinet at Hayes Farm, a 184-acre plantation in Edenton, North Carolina. In 2022, when the property was vacated after being sold to the state to be made into a public historic site, a copy of the constitution was found in the filing cabinet.
Brunk Auctions/CBS News Philadelphia
Samuel Johnston, governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789, owned the farm and oversaw the state convention that ratified the Constitution.
About a hundred texts of the US Constitution were printed after a heated debate at the site of what is now Federal Hall National Memorial in New York. Congress decided to send it to the states for ratification.
A handful of these copies are known to still exist, including the one sold on Thursday.
Lucia Suarez Sang contributed to this report.
