Franklin D. Roosevelt
Signed until 1945, so the supply is fixed — nothing new is being added to this market.
Recorded sales
| Date | What sold | Certified | Price | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-11-01 | Signed 1929 letter | JSA Auto 8 | $1,399 | auction result |
| 2017-08-05 | Signed first edition of A Career in Progressive Democracy (1931) | Beckett | $1,140 | auction result |
| 2026-07-08 | Signed White House letter framed display | Beckett | $993 | auction result |
| 2025-10-19 | Signed cheque of 1 June 1944 countersigned by a second signatory Multi-signed | PSA/DNA Auto NM-MT 8 | $806 | auction result |
| 2014-07-18 | Signed 1921 letter on Woodrow Wilson Foundation letterhead | PSA/DNA Auto 9 | $540 | auction result |
| 2015-08-08 | Signed cut | PSA/DNA | $510 | auction result |
| 2025-10-19 | Signed 1929 letter on State of New York Executive Chamber stationery | JSA | $458 | auction result |
By certification level
These are 7 results this index has recorded from Heritage Auctions between 2013 and 2026, not every sale that happened. They under-represent inexpensive items, which sell constantly and are reported rarely, and they exclude private sales this index has no record of. Read them as documented evidence rather than as a complete market.
About this signature
- Status
- Signed until 1945supply is fixed
- Note
- Affordable in typed letters; a handwritten letter from his presidency is another market
- On this index
- 0 listedno sales recorded yet
What does a signed Franklin D. Roosevelt item cost?
Very little for a president of his standing. The certified results recorded here, letters, a cut signature, a signed book and a White House letter, run from about four hundred and fifty dollars to about fourteen hundred, with the middle well under a thousand. That puts him in the same affordable bracket as Theodore Roosevelt, his distant cousin, and nowhere near Washington or Lincoln. We set out why in why a Theodore Roosevelt autograph costs a fraction of Washington's and Lincoln's, and most of the same reasons apply to Franklin.
Why are his most expensive items not on this page?
Because they had no certificate from an independent authenticator, and this index records only sales that did. Eight of the fifteen results researched for this page were sold by Heritage's historical manuscripts department on its own expertise. They include his two dearest: a handwritten letter signed as president in 1942, which Heritage described as extremely rare, at $24,000, and a signed copy of his address on Pearl Harbor, printed as one of his Christmas books, at $11,500. It is the same pattern as Lincoln's page: at the top of a president's market, buyers rely on the auction house and the provenance more than on a modern certificate.
Why does a handwritten letter from his presidency cost so much more?
Because there are so few of them. The certified letters here, from the 1920s and from the White House, sold for between about four hundred and fifty and fourteen hundred dollars. A letter written entirely in his own hand while he was president, which Heritage called extremely rare, sold for $24,000, around seventeen times the dearest of them. A president's routine correspondence was typed and signed in quantity. A letter he took the time to write out himself, in office, is a different and much scarcer object.
Signatures are reproduced more often than most buyers realise, by outright forgery and also by machines and assistants signing on somebody’s behalf. Every item on this page has been examined by PSA/DNA, JSA, Beckett, SGC or CGC, and this index carries nothing else. That is a deliberate restriction, and the investigation that created the modern authentication industry is worth reading, along with what a certificate actually claims.