Lincoln letter bought for £1 is just a copy (From Dorset Echo)

Lincoln letter bought for £1 is just a copy

12:05pm Thursday 5th October 2006 in

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A WEYMOUTH man said it was 'disappointing but not the end of the world' after a car boot find potentially worth £500,000 turned out to be a copy worth a few hundred pounds.

Paul Hughes, of Teeling Road, said his uncle Kenneth Anderson-Jones had paid £1 at the sale for a letter which initially caused huge excitement because it was thought to be by former US president Abraham Lincoln.

Mr Hughes, who this week took the letter to auctioneer Sotheby's on his uncle's behalf to have it checked, said he had personal doubts about it quite soon after seeing it.

The letter dated March 10, 1864, commissions Ulysses S Grant as Lieutenant General and was presented to him by President Lincoln.

Grant himself became president in 1869 and the document gave him command of the United States army, a move that led to victory in the American Civil War.

But Mr Hughes, 47, a professional hypnotherapist, said: "I did a bit of research and quickly realised that it was likely to be a copy because so many Abraham Lincoln documents have been reproduced that there is a nine-point guide available to help people recognise if it is copy.

"I found out that a lot of Lincoln document copies were made by hand in the 1920s for people to hang on the walls of their homes.

"While we were doing this, Sotheby's in New York were checking the letter out and within 24 hours they came back and said that quite clearly from the pictures I had sent that it was a copy, probably from the 1920s, and that it might be worth a couple of hundred pounds.

"My uncle only paid £1 for it so he is philosophical about it. We feel it is disappointing but not the end of the world.

"We have not decided what to do with it yet. Who knows, it may be hung on a family wall. My wife, Pauline, and I regularly go to boot sales, so from now on we will be paying even closer attention."