’Rare Finds’ by Dr. Larry Burriss

Rare Finds
By Dr. Larry Burriss
05/19/2025

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to take some time for a closer look at all of those museum reproductions I have. Then I’m going to take the back off every picture frame sitting on shelves and hanging on walls.
And why am I doing this: because I could have a fortune sitting on my kitchen counter. You think not? Well, take a look at Harvard Law School.
Back in 1946 the school bought what it thought was a souvenir copy of Magna Carta for $27.59. As most institutions do today, the school digitized the document and put it on their web site for everyone to see.
And what we see really isn’t all that impressive. The document is stained, the writing is really small, and the text is in Latin. Dare I say, it really isn’t much to look at.
I happen to have a pristine copy of Magna Carta hanging in my office. It is unstained, and the print is still tiny, but at least the Latin is easy to read.
So what’s the difference between my copy and the Harvard copy. Well, I got my genuine reproduction for under $40. The Harvard original could be worth up to $40-million.

It turns out a Magna Carta expert was recently looking at Harvard’s digitized copy and quickly realized the school didn’t have copy. They had an original of a document printed in 1300s.
But not so fast. This wasn’t a fluke.
In 1989, a collector going through a flea market, paid $4 for a picture and frame. He didn’t like the picture so he took it out of the frame and found what turned out to be a first printing of the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration later sold at auction for more than $8-million.

And so it goes. The world’s rarest stamp, valued at more than $9-million, was discovered in 1873 by a 12-year-old schoolboy going through his uncle’s letters. Curiously, the stamp at one time was owned by a member of the du Pont family who was in prison for third degree murder.
Notice all of these things are hard copies. So you’ll have to excuse me while I go through this stack of papers sitting on my desk and maybe by this time tomorrow I’ll find an original copy of, oh, the Constitution tucked inside a first printing of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.” Maybe not.
I’m Larry Burriss.