An extremely rare original copy of the US constitution on Thursday sold for US$43.2 million — a world record for a historical document at auction — with a cryptocurrency consortium that coveted the text outbid by another investor.
Sotheby’s auction house, which staged the sale, said the item was one of only 13 known surviving copies of the US charter, signed on Sept. 17, 1787, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia by the US’ founders, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison.
The winning bidder was not immediately identified.
Photo: AFP
A group of cryptocurrency investors raised US$40 million in ethereum from more than 17,000 contributors to try to buy the document, but failed to secure the prize, the consortium said.
“We didn’t get the constitution, but we made history nonetheless,” ConstitutionDAO wrote on Twitter.
“We broke the record for the largest crowdfund for a physical object and most money crowdfunded in 72h, which will of course be refunded to everyone who participated,” it added.
A Sotheby’s spokesman said the sale was a world record for a historical document offered at auction.
Selby Kiffer, a manuscripts and ancient books expert at Sotheby’s, said in September that this copy was probably part of an edition of 500 printed the day before the signing, and likely came off the printing presses on the evening of Sept. 16, 1787.
The text, with its celebrated opening of “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,” went on to be ratified by individual states, starting with Delaware in December 1787 and ending with Rhode Island in May 1790.
The original copy sold on Thursday — one of just two still in private hands, in this case the US collector Dorothy Tapper Goldman — was estimated last September at from US$15 million to US$20 million.
In the end it went for more than twice that sum, and in just eight minutes as bidders in the New York auction room, and also on the telephone from around the globe, upped their offers.
Groups such as ConstitutionDAO — the last three letters of its name standing for “decentralized autonomous organization” — have begun forming loose coalitions to raise funds to bid on expensive collectibles, including one group that pulled together US$4 million for a rare Wu-Tang Clan album that had previously been owned by jailed hedge fund founder Martin Shkreli.
THE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH: Footage of the seven-month-old Japanese macaque has gone viral online after he was rejected by his mother and formed a bond with a soft toy A baby monkey in Japan has captured hearts around the world after videos of him being bullied by other monkeys and rejected by his mother went viral last week. Punch, a Japanese macaque, was born in July last year at Ichikawa City Zoo. He has drawn international attention after zookeepers gave him a stuffed orangutan toy after he was abandoned by his mother. Without maternal guidance to help him integrate, Punch has turned to the toy for comfort. He has been filmed multiple times being dragged and chased by older Japanese macaques inside the enclosure. Early clips showed him wandering alone with
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday said he did not take his security for granted, after he was evacuated from his residence for several hours following a bomb threat sent to a Chinese dance group. Albanese was evacuated from his Canberra residence late on Tuesday following the threat, and returned a few hours later after nothing suspicious was found. The bomb scare was among several e-mails threatening Albanese sent to a representative of Shen Yun, a classical Chinese dance troupe banned in China that is due to perform in Australia this month, a spokesperson for the group said in a statement. The e-mail
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
RSS