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A copy of the Declaration of Independence that was printed in 1776 and discovered behind a $4 flea-market painting in 1989 was sold online yesterday for $7.4 million to Norman Lear and an Internet entrepreneur. It was also one of the highest prices paid for a document sold over the Internet. No comprehensive tallies of prices from Internet auctions exist, although eBay, the online auction house that sells everything from tiny figurines to souped-up cars to century-old copies of National Geographic magazine, said several months ago that it believed that a Picasso had sold for just under $2 million in an online deal last year. Yesterday's final price vaulted a one-item Internet auction past some of the most talked-about traditional auctions of recent years, including the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sale with the $574,500 humidor and the $442,500 rocking chair, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor auction with the $415,000 mahogany table, and the Marilyn Monroe auction with the $1.15 million dress, the one she wore the night she sang "Happy Birthday" to President John F. Kennedy in 1962.
The copy of the declaration that changed hands yesterday had been auctioned once before, also at Sotheby's. That sale, in 1991, was conducted the traditional way, with an auctioneer who pounded a gavel after saying "going, going, gone." The price was $2.42 million, which stood as a record for the declaration until yesterday. This time, the same auctioneer was in charge, but the bidding was done with computers. The bids were posted on Sotheby's Web site, www.sothebys.com, the moment they were submitted. The buyers were the television producer Norman Lear and the Internet entrepreneur David Hayden. Mr. Lear, who created shows including "All in the Family" and "Maude," said he and Mr. Hayden planned to send the declaration around the country in connection with "a theatrical event that will be unashamedly patriotic." Mr. Lear said the traveling show would be produced under the auspices of his nonprofit organization, People for the American Way. Mr. Lear, at his farm in Vermont during the auction, and Mr. Hayden, on a plane from New York to California, matched the only other bidder in increments of $100,000. Sotheby's, which had required prospective bidders to register by Tuesday, did not identify the loser.
Sotheby's billed the auction as a kind of high-tech, high-value experiment, but it was really only medium tech. The bids for Mr. Lear and Mr. Hayden were submitted by someone who works for Mr. Lear and who was at a computer terminal at Sotheby's, at York Avenue and 72nd Street in Manhattan. The auction opened in the morning with a $4 million bid from Mr. Lear and Mr. Hayden. The other bidder's first appearance -- a $4.1 million bid -- came two and a half hours later, and two hours after that, Mr. Lear and Mr. Hayden countered with $4.2 million. The bidding Ping-Ponged between the two sides. At 4:57, three minutes before what was supposed to be the end of the auction, Mr. Lear and Mr. Hayden raised their bid to $4.6 million. With 52 seconds before the deadline, the other bidder climbed to $5.1 million. Under Sotheby's online rules, it will not close an auction until 10 minutes have gone by without a bid, and 22 more bids were posted before it ended at 5:47, 10 minutes after Mr. Lear and Mr. Hayden topped their competitor's final $7.3 million bid. With Sotheby's 10 percent commission, the buyers' total came to $8.14 million. "We had thought we would stop about six because we saw no possibility of its going past six," he said, referring to $6 million. "How to explain it? There is no price on liberty. You've got to take a pill with this, but nonetheless that's the way we were feeling."
Mr. Lear said he had heard about the auction last week and had called Mr. Hayden at the beginning of this week, "when I began to be concerned about where this might go." Mr. Hayden -- the founder of Critical Path, an Internet messaging service, and a co-founder of the company that created Magellan, an Internet search engine that was sold to Excite in 1996 -- agreed to go in with him. David N. Redden, the auctioneer yesterday as in 1991, and one of the auctioneers in the sale of items from Mrs. Onassis's estate in 1996, said the pace of yesterday's auction seemed less furious than that of a traditional sale, in part because of the lag while bids were posted. "The fact was, this slow-motion Internet-style auction actually works," said Mr. Redden, who is a vice chairman of Sotheby's and head of its book and manuscript division. "It gives people time to think and adjust and maybe redefine what their limits are. In this case, there was five or six or seven minutes between the bids, which creates a different dynamic in terms of decision-making. There isn't the up-against-the-wall, make-a-decision-now sense that there is in the auction room."
The document that Mr. Lear and Mr. Hayden bought is known as a Dunlap broadside. It was one of 25 copies surviving from the 500 or so run off by a Philadelphia printer named John Dunlap on the night that the Continental Congress voted to break away from English rule. Mr. Redden said the printer was rushing -- the ink was still wet when the copy sold yesterday was folded. The first line, "In Congress, July 4, 1776," can be seen in reverse at the bottom of the page. The Dunlap broadside was the way that word of the colonies' independence was spread. Copies were sent to local officials and military leaders, including Gen. George Washington, who Mr. Redden said read his copy to his troops. "George Washington's copy is missing the bottom third, one of the most bedraggled," Mr. Redden said. The one sold yesterday was in as good condition as the copies at Yale University and at the Pierpont Morgan Library in Manhattan, he said. The flea-market shopper who bought it in 1989 told him that he had bought the painting behind which the Dunlap broadside was hidden because he liked the frame. He later discarded the painting and the frame.
"Cost of Independence Up to $6 Million," Reuters, May 23, 2000
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The copy was discovered in 1989 by an anonymous Philadelphia businessman who visited a flea market in Adamstown, Pa., and purchased a decaying painting of a country scene because he wanted the frame. He paid $4. When the businessman dismantled the painting, he discovered the Declaration folded up and hidden behind the canvas. Experts at Sotheby's determined that it was one of up to 400 printed in 1776 to announce the American colonies' separation from Great Britain and the creation of a new country.
Only 25 of the original copies of the Declaration of Independence still exist and none are held west of Dallas. The Adamstown copy sold for $2.42 million at Sotheby's in 1991 to Atlanta-based Visible Equities, Inc., shattering the previous record of $1.59 million set in 1990 for another copy of the document many deem the most important in U.S. history.Now Visible Equities is selling its purchase. Sotheby's estimates the document could bring in from $4 million to $6 million.``We decided to auction this online because we wanted to widen the audience,'' explained Sotheby's vice chairman David Redden. ``The Declaration of Independence really lends itself to the Internet. It's something that has such a powerful message.''
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