A Roosevelt letter costs less than a scrap of Washington

The three markets side by side

The certified results on Washington's page, Lincoln's page and Roosevelt's page line up like this.

Cheapest certified item. Washington: a cut signature at $10,980. Lincoln: a legal document from his law practice at $3,884. Roosevelt: a framed document collage at $450.

The typical item. For Roosevelt, the middle of his single-signed results is under a thousand dollars, and most of his letters, documents and photographs sold for between about six hundred and fifteen hundred. For Washington, nothing certified sold for less than eleven thousand. For Lincoln, the only certified result under eighty thousand was that one legal paper.

The top. Roosevelt's dearest result, a signed photograph of him as a Rough Rider, made $4,800. Lincoln's made $181,250 and Washington's $109,800.

Put plainly, Roosevelt's most expensive item cost less than half of Washington's cheapest.

Reason one: how much he wrote

Roosevelt wrote prodigiously. By one estimate he wrote more than 150,000 letters, on top of dozens of books. The Library of Congress holds about 276,000 documents in his papers, the largest Roosevelt collection anywhere.

He also wrote in a different age, the age of the typewriter. Much of his correspondence after leaving office was copied with carbon paper for his own records and bound into volumes, which gives a sense of the scale. A typed letter needs only a signature from the man himself, which is one reason so many signed Roosevelt letters exist.

Nobody has counted how many genuine signatures survive for any of these three men, and we would not pretend to. But everything about how Roosevelt worked points to a far larger supply than either of the others.

Reason two: how long ago, and how long they had

Washington died in 1799. Everything he signed was signed with a quill more than two centuries ago, and paper of that age has had a long time to be lost, burned, damaged or locked away in institutions.

Lincoln was president for barely four years and was killed in 1865, a few weeks into his second term. The material from his presidency, the part most collectors want, comes from a short window.

Roosevelt was president for more than seven years, then lived for another decade, writing constantly, until his death in 1919. His supply was produced over a longer career, much more recently, and in a form that has survived well.

Reason three: what is left for collectors

Supply is only half a price. The other half is demand, and the top of these markets is shaped by what the most serious buyers can still find.

A great deal of Washington's and Lincoln's most important paper sits in libraries, archives and museums and will never be sold. What reaches auction is what is left, and at the top of the market it is fought over. That is why a single Washington letter about raising the army made eight times the price of his signature, and why Lincoln portraits vouched for by his own secretary sell in the hundreds of thousands.

Roosevelt's market has no shortage at the bottom, so his prices are set less by scarcity and more by what an item says or shows. The Rough Rider photograph made more than three times his other signed photographs. A typed letter about the Panama Canal outsold a letter written entirely in his own hand.

What it means for a collector

Roosevelt is where a presidential collection can start with real content. For the price of a clipped Washington signature, a buyer could own several signed Roosevelt letters, chosen for what they say.

Pay for the subject, not the format. On all three of these pages, what a document is about has moved the price more than whose hand wrote the body or how crisp the signature is. Washington's letter was written out by an aide. Roosevelt's Panama letter was typed.

Expect a second signature on official papers. Appointments, commissions and certificates from all three presidents routinely carry an official's countersignature. That is normal, and the index keeps those documents out of like-for-like comparisons.

And buy certified. Cheap does not mean safe. A large supply of genuine material also gives forgers plenty to imitate.

The thing worth sitting with

Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt are three of the most celebrated presidents in American history. Their signatures are priced nothing alike.

The difference is not how much each man is admired. It is how much paper each one left behind, and how much of it is still free to change hands. Roosevelt wrote his way into abundance. Washington and Lincoln did not have the time, the tools or, in Lincoln's case, the years.

You can read how we work the numbers out.

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