In the summer of 1989, a financial analyst from Philadelphia stopped at a flea market in Adamstown, Pennsylvania. According to the Los Angeles Times, he paid $4 for a small painting of a country scene, not because he wanted the artwork, but because he liked the ornate frame.
Back home, when he tried to detach the canvas, the frame fell apart in his hands. Tucked between the canvas and the wood backing was a folded sheet of paper.
According to Snopes, a friend who collected Civil War memorabilia urged him to have the document appraised. The verdict: an original Dunlap Broadside, one of about 200 copies of the Declaration of Independence printed overnight on July 4, 1776, by John Dunlap, the official printer of the Continental Congress. Only 24 surviving copies had been known to exist.
Sotheby's auctioned the find in 1991 for $2.42 million.
