Hobbies: Paper Celebrities

Anybody who thinks that an autograph hound is nothing but a teen-ager waiting outside the “21” Club for celebrities should have been in a ball room at Manhattan’s Gotham Hotel one night last week. There, decorous nods and flicks of programs caused little fragments of history to change hands. A letter about foreign policy from President John Adams to “Their Excellencies Benjamin Franklin Esqr and Thomas Jefferson Esqr” brought $1,600, and an A.L.S. (Autograph Letter, Signed) from President George Washington, accompanied by an unsigned letter written to him, went for $1,250. He would have seen a journal of the Gold Rush, by a nonentity named Arthur W. King, bid up to $1,800, and a document signed by a Mohawk war chief gofor $500.

And if he marveled at the prices, so did the auctioneer, Autograph Dealer Charles Hamilton. For the old game of autograph collecting is riding its biggest, fattest boom.

A Gauguin for $400. For example, a letter from George Washington that brought $125 in 1951 brought $3,000 at an auction last October. An excellent Rutherford B. Hayes that sold for $10 a decade ago is worth about $150 in today’s market. Director Michel Castaing of the Paris firm of Charavay Autographes (founded in 1830) estimates that autograph prices have risen 30% during the past five years and that the total number of collectors has in creased by some 25%.

Prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic is the obvious reason for the boom. Less obvious is the inflation of the art market, which makes collecting per se seem like a good investment, as well as a must for social escalation. A man who cannot afford $150,000 for a Gauguin can still show off a handsomely framed letter in Gauguin’s handwriting for about $400.

High, Wide & Whimsical. Last week’s Gotham auction grossed $45,240 for 214 items, for which Hamilton had expected only about $36,600. Two notable poems were sold: a ten-stanza manuscript by Robert Burns (four lines of which appear in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations) brought $1,200, and a signed manuscript transcript of Robert Frost’s The Gift Outright, the poem he recited at President Kennedy’s inauguration, brought $2,000. But plenty of bad guys were represented, too. Traitor Benedict Arnold’s three-page last will and testament, handwritten before he fled to England, was bought by a dealer for $2,800. Two documents signed by Adolf Hitler at his 1941 headquarters went to bidders for $140 and $110. A Quisling went for $25, with his handwritten 1944 birthday greetings to the man who was to preside over Germany’s surrender, Admiral Karl Doenitz. A note from Jack Ruby was withdrawn when nobody bid on it.

“Smuttily Yours.” Highest-priced autograph on record is that of Button Gwinnett, signer of the Declaration of Independence—its last sale was for $51,000. The dedicated collector aspires to have a complete set of all signers, and Gwinnett’s signature is the rarest of them all, since he was killed in a duel in 1777 at the age of 45.

But for the most part, signatures have little value by themselves. What collectors most want is a letter or other manuscript having a direct bearing on the individual’s history-making specialty. Thus a Hemingway letter criticizing Faulkner—with the inclusion of a four-letter word—sold last year for $1,550. On the other hand, some communications from Astronaut John Glenn to a car dealer, which brought $425 in 1962, would have been a much better investment had they been concerned with outer space.

The late President Kennedy’s is the most sought-after autograph today—the more so because so many of his signed letters were not really signed. As President, Kennedy authorized certain secretaries to imitate his signature, and used mechanical robots to trace his name. Highest-priced J.F.K. item so far is the letter he wrote a friend from boarding school at the age of 15, signed “Smuttily yours, Jack Kennedy,” which was sold to Movie Producer David L. Wolper two months ago for $2,700.

For a living person’s autograph the highest price ever paid was rung up in an auction last year for a four-page letter from Jacqueline Kennedy, written when her husband was a Senator, in reply to a begging letter from an Englishman. Auctioneers had estimated that the letter would bring no more than $250, but a Boston lawyer paid $3,000 for it.