Signed as president: when the office is worth paying for

The rule

The New Jersey dealer Stuart Lutz put it plainly to NPR in 2009. If a president is good enough to date something during his presidency, he said, "it'll be worth a lot more than when he was senator or candidate." Collecting guides say the same: whether an item was signed in office is one of the main things that sets its value.

It makes sense. A letter on White House paper, an appointment or a commission is a piece of the presidency. A letter from a governor or a retired man is a piece of his life. So I wanted to see how much the office adds when you line up real sales.

How I sorted them

I took every certified result on the six presidents' pages and put each one in a group by the date it carries: before the presidency, in office, or after. Official documents with a second signature from a cabinet officer stay in, because a countersignature is part of how a president signs an appointment, but I note them. Cut signatures and undated photographs went to one side, because nobody can say when they were signed.

These are small samples, a handful of sales per man, sold years apart. The direction matters more than the exact multiple.

Where the rule holds

Eisenhower. The clearest pair on the index. A typed letter signed in October 1956, while he was in the White House, made $684. A letter from December 1961, eleven months after he left, made $183. That is nearly four times as much for the one written in office.

Theodore Roosevelt. His five dated pieces from his presidency, a White House photograph, two documents, an appointment and a naval commission, sold for between $840 and $2,196, with the middle of them at $1,440. The two from his time as Governor of New York sold for $660 each. The two letters from after he left office made $854 and $1,200. That is about double the governor's paper and about two-fifths more than the retired man's. The two dearest presidential pieces were the most official of all: an appointment and a naval commission, both countersigned.

Lincoln. Here the gap is enormous. Two signed photographs from 1861 and 1864 made $81,250 and $181,250. A legal document from his law practice in the 1840s made $3,884. That is twenty to nearly fifty times as much.

Even Lincoln comes with a catch. The dearer photograph was taken by Alexander Gardner on 24 February 1861, the day after Lincoln reached Washington and more than a week before he was sworn in. The photograph shows a president-elect. When he signed that copy is another question, and the date a photograph was taken is not the date it was signed. What carried that price was the man, the image, and his own secretary's endorsement on the back, which we covered in how John Hay vouched for Lincoln's signature.

Where it barely registers

Franklin Roosevelt. His two certified items from the White House years, a framed White House letter and a 1944 cheque, sold for $993 and $806. His pre-presidential paper sold for $458, $540, $1,140 and $1,399. The best certified Roosevelt letter on the page is from 1929, when he was Governor of New York.

With Roosevelt, what moves the price is not the date but the hand. A typed letter he signed as president sold for a few hundred dollars. A letter he wrote out himself as president sold for sixty times that. Both were signed in office. We set out why in eight thousand letters a day, and almost none in his hand.

Where something else outranks it

Truman. His baseballs signed during his presidency sold for $5,002, $5,497 and $10,200. The ones signed after he left office sold for $2,151, $9,859 and $17,459. The dearest Truman item on the index was signed years after he left the White House. On a baseball, the strength of the ink and what is written with it count for more than the year, which we went through in the president collectors buy on a baseball.

Truman was also unusually reachable in retirement. The National Archives notes that in the 1960s, a caller to the Truman Library might find the former president himself on the line, and that he gave tours and worked with students there. A retired president that easy to reach was never short of chances to sign.

Washington. His one certified item from his presidency is a ship's pass from 1794, countersigned by Edmund Randolph, and it made $18,300. That is more than his wartime discharges and his 1786 Society of the Cincinnati diploma, which sold for between about $11,600 and $15,300.

But it is about a sixth of the $109,800 paid for a 1776 letter about raising the new army. Ship's papers were working documents, issued to prove a ship's nationality during the wars between Britain and France, and Washington and his Secretary of State signed them in batches for the customs collectors to hand out. The 1776 letter was the commander-in-chief raising an army. For Washington, the war outranks the presidency. We looked at that letter in why a Washington letter costs eight times his signature.

Why the rule bends

The presidency is not always the office buyers want. Washington led the Continental Army before he was president. Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander before he was president, and Congress gave him back his five-star rank of General of the Army in March 1961, two months after he left the White House. For both men, a large part of the market cares as much about the general as the president.

The object can matter more than the date. A Truman baseball and a handwritten Roosevelt letter are each worth far more than the date on them would suggest. A dated White House letter is a fine thing, but a typed one from a busy White House is also the most common kind of presidential paper there is.

In office is where the help was. Presidents in office had staff to answer mail and, in many cases, to sign it. The Raab Collection notes that Eisenhower had secretaries signing for him as president, and the autopen was in White House use by Truman's time. A signature dated during a presidency is the one most worth having, and also the one most worth checking.

What to check

Look for the office on the paper itself. A date, White House letterhead, an appointment or a commission show that it was signed in office without anyone having to argue the point. Before October 1901 the official heading was "Executive Mansion." Theodore Roosevelt's office changed it to "White House" on the papers he signed that month, which is a useful check on the date of anything claiming to come from the house.

Treat undated items as undated. A cut signature could come from any year. A White House card at least tells you where it was signed. On Eisenhower's page, a presidential signature card made nearly twice his plain cut. On Theodore Roosevelt's, a White House card made three times a framed collage.

Do not pay the premium blindly. For Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt, the office adds real money. For Franklin Roosevelt, the hand counts for more. For Truman, the ball counts for more. For Washington, the war counts for more.

Buy in-office material certified. It is the most valuable kind of signature and also the kind most often signed by someone else.

The thing worth sitting with

The rule is right in the sense that buyers pay for history, and the presidency is the history most people think of first. But it is not the only one. Washington's best item is from a war. Lincoln's is a portrait from before he took the oath. Truman's is a baseball from his retirement.

What a buyer is paying for is the moment the signature stands for. Most of the time that moment is the presidency. Sometimes it is something the man did before or after.

You can read how we work the numbers out.

Sources