Rare Autographs, Books, Photos & Abraham Lincoln Collection Is Now Online!
University Archives will hold its next sale on April 23, 2025.
530+ lots of high-quality historical artifacts from multiple collecting categories will be offered, in addition to the Abraham Lincoln Collection, one of the largest and most important groupings of Lincoln collectibles to cross the auction block in some time. The Collection represents 60+ Lincoln lots, ranging in estimate from $200 – $800,000, with more than 12 items either written by or signed by Lincoln, ranging in estimate from $2,000 to $100,000.
The Abraham Lincoln Collection
The Abraham Lincoln Collection, coinciding with the 160th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, includes Lincoln autograph letters signed, autograph legal briefs, signed checks, and signed appointments, all with outstanding political, military, legal, and personal content. The Abraham Lincoln Collection also includes material representing the slain president through the visual arts (photographs, engravings, funerary broadsides, etc.) as well as through ephemera, memorabilia, and relics.
The marquee item of the Abraham Lincoln Collection is Lot 65, an incredibly vivid and lifelike Hesler/Ayres interpositive – or silver gelatin positive transparency on glass – of Lincoln, from Lincoln scholar King Hostick through descent. Alexander Hesler’s collodion negative of Lincoln, Portrait Sitting No. 2, was originally taken in Springfield, Illinois on June 3, 1860, and provided the basis of George B. Ayres’s ca. 1895-1900 interpositive made several decades later. The interpositive was cleaned and extensively restored by the George Eastman House & International Museum of Photography & Film (Rochester, New York) in 2007. The Lincoln portrait is displayed in a custom-built presentation case which, upon opening, backlights the glass photograph so viewers can see an exquisite level of detail not found in comparable print photography.
Lot 65, Abraham Lincoln Hesler/Ayres Interpositive
Lot 69 is a 1p autograph letter signed by Lincoln on November 3, 1859, addressed to Peachy Quinn Harrison, a young area man whom Lincoln had defended just four months earlier in what was Lincoln’s one and only murder trial. Lincoln letters proffering advice – in particular homespun wisdom – are especially prized among collectors, and this ALS urges Peachy to exercise his political rights by supporting a Republican candidate named John M. Palmer. Palmer had been Lincoln’s opposing counsel in Peachy’s murder case, but that did not dissuade Lincoln from acting on his behalf. The next year, Palmer returned the favor and supported Lincoln’s 1860 presidential bid.
Lot 66 is a check signed by Lincoln on June 13, 1859 paying a small sum to law partner William H. Herndon, which is possibly unique. Lincoln checks have been a profitable investment in recent years, with checks dated 1859, the year preceding Lincoln’s presidential nomination, being especially desirable. The same day that Lincoln paid his junior law partner, he bought a $2 brandy bottle from Diller’s Drug Store.
Lot 72 is an autograph album belonging to a Rochester, New York teenage girl named Ida Bowers, whose brother was a Civil War veteran. The album contains 74 important signatures including those of Abraham Lincoln as president, Andrew Johnson as president, and ten cabinet members of both administrations, including Seward, Welles, Fessenden, Usher, Dennison, Browning, McCulloch, and Spinner. The Lincoln and Johnson signatures come with Beckett LOAs.
Science
Lot 503 is a 3pp scientific manuscript in German handwritten by Albert Einstein, relating to his Unified Field Theory from the 1940s. The manuscript contains about 446 words in German and 17 lines of scientific calculations in Einstein’s hand, stating in part (translated): “… I want to try to show that a truly natural choice for field equations exists.” Einstein’s manuscript is extremely desirable, not only because it relates to one of Einstein’s greatest legacies, but also because he published almost nothing during this period.
Lot 503, Detail of Albert Einstein Scientific Manuscript
Lot 494 is a 2pp autograph letter signed by Charles Babbage, dated December 1, 1832, discussing the location of a political meeting. In addition to being one of the leading lights of Britain’s 19th C. scientific movement, Babbage was also a twice-failed Liberal or Whig candidate for the House of Commons. The letter underscores how different history would have been had Babbage won the Finsbury seat instead of focusing on his teaching, theorizing, and inventing!
Lot 495 is a 2pp autograph letter signed by Charles Darwin, dated ca. April 14, 1863, addressed to British botanist Daniel Oliver. In this remarkable letter, Darwin speaks excitedly about Primula flowers, a species whose unusual sexual reproduction processes caught Darwin’s interest. Darwin would later write about Primula in articles and in his 1877 book Different Forms of Flowers.
International & World Leaders
Lot 418 is a 1p autograph letter in Hebrew signed by David Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948, an amazing crossroads in world history, just one day after signing the Israeli Declaration of Independence, and two days before being elected to serve as the first Prime Minister of Israel. Ben-Gurion’s participation in the momentous events of the founding of a new nation-state inspired these comments to childhood friend Shlomo Lavi, (translated): “When we first arrived here in Palestine, you as Levkovich and I as Grün … we discovered malaria, swamps, and an Ottoman regime rife with corruption. But now … our heart is joyful at the sight of such great progress. The Jewish people have attained the epitome, the very essence of their existence; the State of Israel is born.”
Lot 464 is a 1p autograph letter signed in the third person by Adam Smith, dated December 21, 1786, when the Scottish economist was hard at work on the fifth volume of his influential treatise, The Wealth of Nations. Smith letters are extremely rare, explaining their recent commanding prices at auction. There are fewer than 200 Adam Smith letters extant, some known only through published sources, and many others only in institutions.
Lot 464, Adam Smith 3rd Person Autograph Letter Signed
Literature
Lot 463 is an 8pp autograph manuscript signed by Ayn Rand, ca. mid-June 1962. The manuscript was Rand’s second-ever submission to her weekly Los Angeles Times Sunday column and was published on June 24, 1962. This draft of Rand’s article entitled “War and Peace” exceeds 898 words and contains numerous contemporaneous edits, cross-outs, and rewrites. In it, Rand introduces the term “statism” to speak at length about different types of big government: socialism, communism, fascism, Nazism, and the “welfare state.” She defines what she sees as good and bad government, and, using examples from the past, mostly in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, illustrates the sinister ways that dictatorships operate.
Entertainment
Lot 350 is Marilyn Monroe’s personally owned and heavily annotated film script of Something’s Got To Give, her last film role. Monroe was to portray Ellen Arden, a woman presumed to have died at sea, who returns to find her husband with another woman. Of the 115 mimeographed script pages, Monroe has annotated 41pp, and heavily annotated 12 of these with her thoughts regarding lines, character and motivations, and blocking. Twentieth Century-Fox scrapped the film after Monroe’s death in August 1962.
Lot 350, Marilyn Monroe Annotated Film Script
Art
Lot 179 is a 1p autograph letter in French signed by Paul Gauguin, n.d. but probably during his days as a Paris art student, as he used the street address of his art school, the Académie Colarossi, as his return address. Less conservative than state-sanctioned art schools, the Académie Colarossi accepted female students and teachers, and welcomed many famous international pupils, like Alberto Giacometti, Alphonse Mucha, and Amedeo Modigliani.
These are just a few of the exceptional items in our April sale.
We hope you can join us!
