[banjo music playing]
[gunshot]
[train horn sounding]
[coins jingling]
RICK: OK, so what do we got here?
I have a letter from John Quincy Adams.
- John Quincy Adams, huh? - Yes.
RICK: 1822-- he was Secretary of State then?
Yes, and he was president in 1824.
Well, he was elected in 2004, and then there
was no inauguration till March because they didn't want
to travel in the winter time.
[laughter]
I found it in a box of items that I got from my uncle
when my uncle passed away.
I'd like to get $6,000 for it.
I would drop down to $5,000, but that would
probably be the least I'd take.
RICK: So what is this letter about?
This letter actually pertains to a census that was taken.
And they included 16- to 18-year-old undocumented
immigrants who were here.
And they had to go back and fix it to the proper census.
So basically we have here John Quincy Adams being
Secretary of State, sending a letter saying,
you did the census wrong.
Redo it. TED: Right.
OK. Interesting.
Yeah.
A letter signed by the president--
the content is so important. TED: Right.
If you had a letter by Abraham Lincoln talking about freeing
the slaves, that is worth a lot more
than Abraham Lincoln complaining that his bathroom doesn't work.
[laughs] Do you understand what I'm saying?
Yeah. RICK: Yeah.
The content does matter.
So things like this are always scary to me
because it was just common, common
practice to have your secretary sign everything for you.
You're a busy guy.
Yeah.
Or this was back in the 1800s.
The president might have been drunk.
[laughs] But the paper looks right.
The ink looks right.
Have you checked this out at all?
I have.
I've done some background of my own over the internet.
I did match up his signatures and things like that.
I'm assuming you want to sell it.
Yes.
I was looking for $6,000.
This is actually great shape.
You're lucky because this has obviously been under glass
for a very, very long time.
Do you mind if I call someone in?
Yeah, no, if it's gonna help us.
I'd like to make sure it's real too.
All right.
I'm gonna call him up.
Hang out a few months.
Maybe buy something. TED: OK.
I've got some cool stuff.
[laughs]
There's a lot of history behind this guy.
I mean, he's pretty much groomed to be
the President of the United States at some point in time.
This guy really stood out, you know.
OK, so is it his signature?
Did he write the letter?
And what's it worth?
And we'd would look at a few things.
First thing I'm gonna do is look at the signature
under magnification.
I want to look at the ink.
And I can see this is using a quill.
This overlapping on here, especially right in this area,
you know, we know this is live ink.
And what I did bring along today are several examples.
It's really flowing.
It's a very beautiful signature.
Here's one example.
And we see some similarities tying in here.
And what I want to do on this one especially
is look at his last name.
And I'm starting to see the same thing over and over again.
TED: Because that's actually abbreviated.
And this just makes sense where
he would do an abbreviation of this as well.
And everything matches up pretty well here.
From everything I can tell, we're
talking about a piece signed by the sixth President
of the United States, which is kind of cool.
All right, the letter itself, you have a lighter ink.
You have a darker ink on here in two different pressures.
In this case on here, and this is pretty simple,
and it's something that, you know, I've studied a lot,
this isn't his writing.
Could have been written by his secretary.
Back then they called it semi-proxy.
And do you think that just because the differential
between the--
Well, I mean, there's several factors-- obviously, the ink.
But also just the style of writing is not his.
So what's it worth?
If it was three years later, a handwritten letter by him
could go for $5,000 to $10,000 as a sitting president.
But this is Secretary of State.
It's a little less significant.
Stuff like this typically runs at about $1,600.
They don't go for much more than that.
Thanks, man. STEVE GRAD: Thanks.
Good to see you. TED: Thank you.
STEVE GRAD: Good luck.
Thanks.
John Quincy Adams is a collectible autograph,
you know, mostly just for presidential collectors.
I mean, is he desirable?
Yeah, to an extent, but not as much as like Abraham
Lincoln or George Washington.
OK, so, if it was written in his hand,
we'd have a whole lot of money.
But we don't.
TED: I think the whole thing was written by him.
All right.
Just that there's a discrepancy in the signature
and the letter itself, which is the way he signed things.
OK, well, you know what?
You're always free to have it checked out or somebody else.
TED: All right.
RICK: I could give you like $1,000.
Yeah, for that, I think I'm gonna go ahead and keep it.
I'll keep it and [inaudible] save it for my kids
or do something else with it, so.
RICK: OK.
Sorry we couldn't make a deal, man.
Thank you.
It's not his handwriting?
You got to be kidding me.
I'm going to try and go ahead and legitimize it 100%
and see if I get some more opinions on it.