A map that originally shaped the course of American history is set to be auctioned by a company in Asheville, and there is a possibility that it could fetch a record-setting price.
Brunk Auctions, located off Tunnel Road, will be holding a livestream auction starting at 10 a.m. on Oct. 29 of the original manuscript map of the Mason-Dixon line that’s titled “A Plan of the West Line or Parallel of Latitude which is the Boundary between Provinces of Maryland and Pennsylvania.”
Brunk Auctions said the starting bid will be $500,000, but Christie’s estimates the value to be between $800,000 to $1.2 million.
Photo provided by Brunk Auctions.
Photo provided by Brunk Auctions
“If the interest is high, there is a chance it could go for even more than that. There’s always a chance that it could break the record for the highest-selling map in history,” Madelia Ring, director of marketing at Brunk Auctions told 828NewsNow.
According to Christie’s, the highest auction price for a map in American history is $2 million, paid in December 2010 for Abel Buell’s 1784 “first known map of the U.S. to be printed in America.”
According to a news release from Brunk Auctions, the map, drawn between 1767-1768 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, is the symbolic boundary between the Northern and Southern states. It outlined the borders between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Brunk Auctions said the map was originally owned by Benjamin Chew, who was the chief justice of Pennsylvania.
The Chew family sold the map at Christie’s in 1982, where publishing magnate Malcolm Forbes acquired it for $360,000, the release said. The Map Collector subsequently described the result as the highest price ever paid for a map at the time.
Two decades later, the manuscript returned to Christie’s with an estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million. It sold in March 2002 for $556,000 to a private collector.
Following that sale, Brunk Auctions said in the release that the privately-held map underwent extensive conservation at Colonial Williamsburg before being exhibited at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum as part of Degrees of Latitude. Conservators removed the map’s deteriorating linen backing, treated stains and damage, repaired tears and losses and relined the document with Japanese paper. The painstaking removal of the old backing alone took more than 200 hours across the map’s 76-inch length.
The manuscript remained on view at Colonial Williamsburg through March 2006. Now, more than four decades after the Library of Congress sought to acquire it and nearly 260 years after Mason and Dixon put pen to paper, the map is returning to the auction block, and that auction will be here in Asheville.
Brunk Auctions Vice President Lauren Brunk talked about the map last month in a YouTube video by the Decorative Arts Trust.
“This six-inch tall map is arguably one of the most famous land-related documents in America,” she said.
Brunk Auctions President Andrew Brunk said in the release that having an original hand-drawn, manuscript version of such an iconic American map is exceptionally rare.
“There is no other known original, and in the intervening centuries, the line they drew has become part of the fabric of our culture. Over the years, it has been used in critical developments in our country’s history. ‘Whistling Dixie’ and ‘old Dixie’ are references that lead back to this 1768 map, and it happens to be the reason we still talk about ‘north of the line’ and ‘south of the line’ 250 years later,” he said in the release. “We’re honored to bring it to market in America’s semiquincentennial. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for someone to acquire one of the most important documents in U.S. history.
The Mason-Dixon manuscript is expected to draw significant collector interest and will open at $500,000 when it comes to auction October 29 alongside a related group of period maps and manuscripts documenting the survey. The auction will take place at Brunk Auctions, 117 Tunnel
This artifact will be offered in the auction with other maps and manuscripts that were critical in justifying the Mason-Dixon survey, according to Brunk Auctions.