Posted on Wednesday 26 September 2007
Yesterday Sotheby’s revealed details of their upcoming sale of The Magna Carta – the last existing copy in private hands. During the week of December 10, 2007, the New York auction house will offer the document regarded as “the birth certificate of freedom” (Sotheby’s) and considered to be the most important document ever to be put up for auction. 
The medieval vellum manuscript, dated 1297, stands as a pillar for all modern ideas of democracy and liberty. For this reason it is revered as the most remarkable single document in history. With fewer than twenty copies of The Magna Carta in existence, this is one of two copies outside of England and the only one likely to be sold. It has an estimated sale price of $20/$30m and the proceeds will go to The Perot Foundation.
David Redden, Vice Chairman of Sotheby’s, said, “The Magna Carta is the first rung on the ladder to freedom, followed by the great American charters of freedom - the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and The Gettysburg Address. This document symbolizes mankind’s eternal quest for freedom; it is a talisman of liberty.”
...here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.
--Winston Churchill, 1956
For more information on the sale, please visit: