Historic Document Sources May 1, 1996February 6, 2017 Yesterday, I described my Jackie Kennedy Onassis letter to Rudolf Nureyev. I bought it a couple of years ago, before Mrs. Onassis died. Whatever kind of investment it may have been, you could probably tell it’s something (like that Margaret Mitchell letter you may have seen me quote last week) I just find really neat. I couldn’t conceive of paying a million bucks to own some painting, let alone five or ten million to buy a painting by an artist I had actually heard of. But $25,000 for a letter handwritten by Thomas Jefferson 200 years ago? This I can conceive of. I’m not recommending it (and almost all the items in my little collection cost much, much less than $25,000). And I’m not putting down those of you with million-dollar paintings by artists I never heard of. Different strokes for different folks. I should also say there are tremendous pitfalls in buying “historic documents,” not least being the risk of forgery. There are a load of sales folk out there who will paint irresistible word pictures to get you to pay triple for something what they just paid. After all, what’s a thing like this “worth”? Remember the Broadway musical, The Rothschilds? This is how Meyer Rothschild got his start — he managed to buy a few old Roman coins, and then dazzled the passing noblemen with stories. “Picture it — the Ides of March. Caesar, about to go off to the Senate. His wife has a bad feeling about it. ‘Julius: today, stay home from work.’” (I am quoting the play very loosely here.) He says he has to go, she says no, he says, “Tell you what we’ll do. I’ll toss a coin.” And then, Rothschild starts to sing: “He tossed a coin, he tossed a coin, saying ‘coin, it’s up to you, tell me what I ought to do’ and he tossed it — PERHAPS THIS VERY ONE!” “I’ll take it!” cries the nobleman, no longer caring about the price. Well, that’s the way I get sometimes with these things, and that’s how the Sotheby’s crowd got last week, and that’s how you could get if you’re not careful, so be careful. Don’t buy anything for six months, if you ever do at all. Give yourself time to get a sense of all the amazing things out there and what prices they’re offered at or sell for at auction. That said, here’s an incomplete list of some of the dealers and auction houses that sell historic documents. You could write and request a recent catalog to get a sense of what sorts of things they offer. Prices at some can be as low as $50 or $100, with lots and lots of stuff generally in the $500 to $5,000 range (such as my Jackie Kennedy Onassis letter, quoted yesterday), and then some pretty amazing stuff on up into the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. ADS Autographs Box 806 Webster, NY 14560 Walter Burks Autographs Box 23097 Stanley, KS 66223 Christie’s 502 Park Ave. New York, NY 10022 (Ask for a recent “Printed Books and Manuscripts” auction catalog, with the hammer prices the items brought.) Gary Hendershott Box 22520 Little Rock, AR 72221 Lionheart Autographs 470 Park Avenue South PH New York, NY 10016 Pacific Book Auction Galleries 139 Townsend St. #305 San Francisco, CA 94107 Profiles in History 345 N. Maple Drive #202 Beverly Hills, CA 90210 Max Rambod 9903 Santa Monica Blvd. Beverly Hills, CA 90212 Remember When Auctions Box 1829 Wells, ME 04090 Joseph Rubinfine 505 S. Flagler Dr. West Palm Beach, FL 33401 Scott Winslow Associates Box 10240 Bedford, NH 03110 Seaport Autographs 6 Brandon Lane Mystic, CT 06355 I know this is old fashioned. Some of these guys, and others, must have Web pages by now. I don’t know, because I’m on their mailing lists. But let me know if you find some good web sites. Tomorrow: Hair-Raising Price for Hair Removal Stocks?