Rare copy of 1787 Constitution up for auction, with $1M opening bid

One of only a handful of ratified copies of the United States Constitution is expected to be auctioned off later this month with a starting bid of $1 million.

North Carolina homeowners found the document while rummaging through an old filing cabinet as they prepared to sell their house, which sits on property bought by then Gov. Samuel Johnston in the 1700s.

This listing is a copy of the document that was both signed by then-Secretary of Congress Charles Thomson and originally printed, according to the auction house.

The auction house said that the sale, expected to take place on Sept. 28, is the only one for a signed and ratified copy of the document since 1891.

“We don’t know if that copy still survives, and if it does, whether it is now among the eight known institutional copies,” it wrote in the listing.

The listing is currently at $1 million but the auction house expects the next bid to be at $1.1 million or more, according to the website.

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