The Signature of Button Gwinnett
In the world of signature collecting the "holy grail" is to obtain a signature of Button Gwinnett, a representative from Georgia to the Continental Congress and also a signer of the Declaration of Independence. As explained by Wikipedia:
In 2022, a copy sold for $1.4m.
If you're going to build a device to move objects through time, I think you can do better than that.
Gwinnett's autograph is highly sought by collectors as a result of a combination of the desire by many top collectors to acquire a complete set of autographs by all 56 signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and the extreme rarity of the Gwinnett signature; there are 51 known examples, since Gwinnett was fairly obscure prior to signing the Declaration and died shortly afterward. Only ten of those are in private hands. The 1953 Isaac Asimov short story "Button, Button" concerns an attempt to obtain a genuine (and therefore valuable) signature of Gwinnett by means of a device that can move objects through time.
In 2022, a copy sold for $1.4m.
If you're going to build a device to move objects through time, I think you can do better than that.
image source: Christies.com
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Category: Collectors | Eighteenth Century