Copley collection rarities go on sale

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The Copley collection includes one of the earliest broadside editions of the Declaration of Independence, estimated to be worth about $600,000 to $800,000. — Sotheby’s New York

The 1960s and 1970s were a golden age of Americana collecting, when someone with the right eye and enough money could amass museum-quality holdings of books, letters and other important pieces of history.

An early printing of the Declaration of Independence, for example. An unpublished manuscript by Mark Twain. The chair Abraham Lincoln was sitting in when he learned he had been nominated for president.

Those items and about 2,000 others — a collection valued at $15 million — sat for decades in the private James S. Copley Library in La Jolla, a stately, ivy-covered brick building open to scholars by appointment only. Few San Diegans knew about it or what it contained.

The library is closed now, part of the Copley newspaper family’s sale of various properties in recent years, including The San Diego Union-Tribune. The Americana is being auctioned off in eight groups stretching over a year, including two today, at Sotheby’s in New York.

Experts in collecting said it’s the passing of an era.

“It’s harder and harder these days to put together a great private collection like that,” said David Redden, vice chairman of Sotheby’s. “It’s beyond the resources of most collectors, and even if they have the money, the material is more difficult to find.”

The first two auctions took place in April, with the gavel coming down on almost 200 historical documents. Included was a famously seething dispatch from President Lincoln to a Civil War general: “You must either attack Richmond, or give up the job and come to the defense of Washington.” It sold for $482,500.

A letter signed by Button Gwinnett went for $722,500. Collectors obsessed with the 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence consider Gwinnett their Holy Grail. The Georgia legislator’s signature is rare (only 51 documented examples) because he was killed in a duel less than a year after putting pen to paper.

Combined, the first two auctions took in more than $4 million.

One of the sessions today involves a single document — an original broadside of the Declaration of Independence, printed in Massachusetts to spread the word in the weeks after July 4, 1776. Fewer than 100 broadsides are known to exist, and most are held by museums and other institutions.

Estimated value of the Copley library’s broadside: $600,000 to $800,000.

The day’s other auction is heavy on literary legends, including Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. The Twain material is extensive, more than 100 lots, most of it letters to family, friends and publishers.

“On the whole it is better to deserve honors & not have them, than have them & not deserve them,” Twain wrote in one note.

His unpublished autobiographical manuscript, “Family Sketch,” is valued at $120,000 to $160,000.

The Copley material “has created a buzz among collectors” because of its breadth and quality, said William Reese of Connecticut, a dealer of rare books.

“The Copley library was built with a real eye toward content,” Reese said. “They weren’t just buying letters that happened to be signed by famous people. These are documents that have something important to say about the person or the moment.”

Long interested in books and history, James Copley started collecting fiercely in the mid-1960s after he hired Richard Reilly as curator. Reilly first focused on Copley’s historical and political passions — the Revolutionary War, California and the West — and then spread to the cultural heritage of important writers, singers, musicians and scientists.

“Jim wanted not only documents relating to important events in American history, but those portraying some sentiment or giving some feeling for people who made the history,” Reilly wrote in “A Promise Kept,” his 1983 book about the library. “He wanted every item to represent dramatic, humorous, romantic, passionate or tragic events in the lives of real people unconsciously caught in the weave of American history.”

Copley died in 1973. His widow, Helen, continued the collection, and in 1982 she dedicated a new home for the library, the brick building on Kline Street.

Nathan Raab, a Philadelphia-based dealer of historical documents, said he’ll be at the auction today to bid on behalf of a handful of clients. He has his eye on Albert Einstein letters and speeches “that really show his personality,” some letters from Mahatma Gandhi, maybe a little Henry David Thoreau.

“There’s some wonderful, uncommon material here,” Raab said. “When a major collection comes on the market, it garners attention, especially if it’s been put together by people with money and taste.”

Reese said collectors are typically in their 50s or older. Their children are grown, and they’ve been successful enough to have disposable income. “Quite often, they are returning to the enthusiasms of their college days,” Reese said. They prefer to remain anonymous outside collecting circles.

There’s been some grumbling on the Internet about the Copley collection leaving San Diego, especially high-end items with local ties such as an early map of the Port of San Diego, circa 1780, valued at $300,000 to $500,000.

The library did donate 18 boxes of material about San Diego, including court records from the early 1850s and letters from prominent land-grant families, to the San Diego History Center. Director David Kahn said the center’s staff is still evaluating the items, but he anticipates having an exhibit before too long.

Phone calls seeking comment from The Copley Press, which consigned the library, and Gurr Johns Inc., the seller’s agent, were not returned.

Redden, from Sotheby’s, said he understands why some people might be upset about the sale.

“When you take a library and break it up, scholars have lost a resource,” he said. “But on the other hand, these items typically go to institutions and private collectors who have a respect for scholarship, so that’s likely to continue.”

Besides, Redden said, a major sale like this has a way of encouraging a new generation of collectors. It creates “extraordinary pockets of people who are deeply fascinated with American history and spread it to others. They understand that these documents penetrate history in a way that reading about it in a book never will.”

Additional auctions of Copley Library items are scheduled for October and April.

Copyright © 2016, The San Diego Union-Tribune
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