One of the most famous flea market finds is almost certainly the discovery of a Dunlap Broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence in 1989. A man was browsing a Pennsylvania flea market for a painting when he came across a piece set in an old, ornate frame. He paid $4 & immediately ripped out the torn painting to repurpose the frame.
Folded & hidden in the back of the painting was a piece of paper that would change his life forever.
The man, publicly identified only as a ‘financial analyst’, would unfold the centuries-old document to see the most significant document in American history: The Declaration of Independence.
It took convincing and multiple years, but the owner eventually brought the document to Sotheby’s Americana printing specialist. The experts at Sotheby’s did more than authenticate the piece as a true, original copy of the Declaration of Independence, but a Dunlap Broadside nonetheless.
In June 1991, the Declaration was sold for $2.42M at Sotheby’s. It set the record for the most valuable piece of printed Americana ever sold, surpassing another Dunlap Broadside which had set the record the previous year.
From that initial $4 ‘investment’ at the flea market, the seller returned an easy $2,174,000 profit (including seller’s fees). It doesn’t feel like an embellishment to say that a 54,349,900.00% return in two years is… quite good.
Hidden in Plain Sight