1776 Declaration of Independence broadside sells for $3.6 million in auction

A rare July 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence anchored a blockbuster sale of Americana at Goldin, the Runnemede, New Jersey-based auction house that closed its USA 250th Anniversary Historical Auction on Wednesday.

The so-called Exeter Broadside sold for $3,646,443 in a bidding contest that ran until the auction’s close. New Jersey insurance executive George E. Norcross III placed the winning bid on behalf of his family, according to the Philadelphia news outlet that first reported the buyer’s identity. The hammer price was $2.9 million before Goldin’s 22% buyer’s premium was applied, and bidding began at $1.5 million around 8 a.m. Wednesday before nearly doubling by the time Mr. Norcross’s final bid arrived around 10:30 p.m. 

For most of the auction, Goldin and outside reporting described the document as one of only 10 surviving copies of the Exeter edition. That changed on July 3, five days before the sale closed, when Britain’s National Archives announced the discovery of an 11th known copy — the first found outside the United States — among the papers of a Royal Navy captain who had captured an American privateer ship in 1776, according to an Associated Press report carried by PBS. The document was printed by Robert Luist Fowle in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the immediate aftermath of the Declaration’s adoption, and was posted in taverns and public halls to spread word of independence to the countryside. 

In a statement, Lexie and Alex Norcross said the family is “deeply honored to become the stewards of such an extraordinary piece” of the nation’s history. Mr. Norcross previously paid a record $4 million in 2021 for a rare engraving of the Declaration commissioned by John Quincy Adams, and this marks the second founding document his family has acquired at auction. Ken Goldin, the auction house’s founder, called the Exeter copy the most significant item his company has handled in its 14-year history, according to the same report. 

Goldin opened the auction June 2, and by July 2, bidding on the broadside had reached $1.2 million across five bids — about a week before the Wednesday close — according to a regional news report on the sale.

The auction, timed to the nation’s semiquincentennial, also included dozens of other historical and pop-culture artifacts. A framed, signed fair copy of the Einstein-Szilard letter — the correspondence that helped spur President Franklin D. Roosevelt to launch what became the Manhattan Project — sold for $640,500. A baseball used in the climactic father-son catch scene of the 1989 film “Field of Dreams” brought $123,220.

Other notable results included a Feb. 6, 1783, document signed by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay implementing the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, which sold for $122,000, and a complete set of single-signed cuts from all 45 U.S. presidents, which fetched $120,780. A George Washington letter addressed to Col. Daniel Hitchcock requesting help raising the Continental Army sold for $109,800.

Rounding out the auction were a Herbert Hoover single-signed baseball ($67,100), a signed Mickey Mantle photo matching his 1958 Topps All-Star card ($46,970), a Michael Jordan-signed 1991 Sports Illustrated Dream Team cover ($40,382), a Hugh Hefner-signed copy of the first Playboy magazine featuring Marilyn Monroe ($25,010), and a Rosa Parks single-signed baseball ($12,666).