A massive Abraham Lincoln auction, the most extensive sale of items from America's 16th president, yielded big prices Wednesday in Chicago.
Several of the top-selling pieces in the 144-item auction were from Lincoln's assassination by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865.
A pair of blood-stained gloves Lincoln carried that night sold for $1.5 million, while Lincoln's handkerchief sold for $826,000, easily exceeding its $400,000 high estimate from auctioneer Freeman's-Hindman. A cuff button taken from Lincoln's shirt sold for $445,000.
A ticket stub from that night's performance of "Our American Cousin" sold for $381,200, the highest price paid for a stub from the show. Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay bought two pristine tickets from the performance for $262,500 in 2023.
Two other items easily outperformed their estimates.
The earliest existing sample of Lincoln's handwriting, which had a high estimate of $300,000, sold for an astounding $521,200.
On one side of the paper, a 15-year-old Lincoln wrote, "Abraham Lincoln is my nam[e] / And with my pen I wrote / the same / I wrote in both hast[e] (sic) and speed / And left it here for fools / to read." On the other side, he practiced long-division math problems.
The first printing of Lincoln's second inaugural address in 1865, which was estimated to be worth $40,000 to $60,000 sold for $165,600.
The lots came from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Foundation, which purchased a collection of more than 1,500 Lincoln items from historian Louise Taper for a reported $23 million.
According to a report in the Washington Post, the foundation elected to sell less than 10% of the items to help pay off its debts.
Taper criticized the decision to auction off the items, telling WBEZ in Chicago, “My intent was for these historic items to reside in a place for the public to enjoy and learn from."
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.