The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-04-28
AUTOGRAPH COLLECTING
 IS A PERENNIAL HOBBY

the meetings and he signed the Declara-
 tion of Independence for his father. The
 only known autograph letter of Thomas Lyncn. Jr., is in the famous Emmet col lection of signers, owned by the Lenox llbray in New York city It brought
 $5OOO
 Other rare signers are Gwinnett, Hart
 Morton, Hayward and Middleton. A good set of the sgners, with no cut signatures. would be easily worth $50O0. There are very few complete sets.
 Another signature of value, because of
 its rarity is that of Samuel Woodworth How many collectors know who he was? The manuscript of a poem by him
 brought $125 dollars, yet his name conveys
 nothing to the average reader or collec- tor.
 me poem was his famous "The Old Oaken Bucket" He was afflicted with paralysis for several years of his middle
 life and his wife did most of his writing I for him; hence the scarcity of his auto ] graphs.
 l Letters of General Washington range l from $10 to 5000 in value; everything he
 has written Is greatly in demand. Lincoln ranks in popularity with Washington i The rarest autograph of a President is | that of Andrew Johnson, and the next |
 ! At the present time the greatest de- mand Is for autographs of the English lit- erary celebrities. some of which bring | thousands of dollars. Keats and Shelley command such high prices that they sell better abroad, where there are more col lections, than they do here.
 In forming collections 1t is well to bear in mind that letter containing historical information or information pertaining to famous individuals is usually of value. | ters and are valued because of the con- | ters and ar valued because of the con- | tents, irrespective of the signature. If l such letter bears the signature of 1 famous individual it's value is greatly | enhanced.
 l very valuable contents letter. signed | by an unknown man. one Captain Ran l dolph of the Confederate army, and written to his uncle describes the firing | on Fort Sumter from the first to the last | shot. His letter is dated April F. 1S61 | and he continued it. with frequent inter ruptions, until after the surrender of | the fort. which occurred on April 14 | The Emmet collection was the finest | private collection in America. It Is now owned by the Lenox library of New York | city The largest private collection in l the United States is now owned by Mir Gratz of Philadelphia, while Messrs. | Thacher Gunther and Joline have large | and valuable collections.
 | It is mistaken idea that there are many forged autographs So far prices are not sufficiently large to pay for the | time and labor involved in making clever | forgeries and should such forgeres exist | they would readily be detected by the experts. for with an autograph that com , mands very high price an exact record 1 is demanded for its origin and ownership, | which passes from owner to owner. l. Autograph collecting is supposed by many to be modern hobby. but it really i dates from the days at least of the early | Greeks and Romans. Cicero is said to l have left an interesting collection. and 1 one of the Ptolemies bargained with the I starving Athenians. giving wheat in ex- ! change for the autographs, or photographs l of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. 1 He was supposed to copy the autographs, 1 which he did with great exactness, but I returned the copies to the Athenians and retained the originals for himself. We are told that Pliny the elder men, | tions seeing in the collection of Pompon- jus Secundus autographs of men written l two centuries previously. We know that | the Chinese preserved early autographs with the greatest care. By the fourteenth century tho ouctom of inscribing auto