Miss Out On ConstitutionDAO? You Can Buy Shares In The Declaration Of Independence For $25 Each

One of the most important documents in American history broke auction records Thursday night and put a spotlight on how valuable historical documents can be. While that auction is over, investors and collectors have a chance to own a piece of the Declaration of Independence through a fractional investing company.

ConstitutionDAO: Over the past several weeks, a group called ConstitutionDAO took donations in exchange for tokens. The group would pool their money together to attempt to purchase a copy of the U.S. Constitution via an auction from Sotheby’s.

The DAO raised over $40 million in Ethereum ETH/USD but ultimately lost the auction to a winning bid of $43.17 million.

The winning bid set a world auction record for any book, manuscript, historical document or printed text, according to Sotheby’s. Prior to the Constitution sale, the record was $21.3 million paid in 2007 for the 1297 Magna Carta.

“It’s an incredible experiment in mobilizing a group with one goal and one voice,” said Rally Rd Founder and Chief Product Officer Rob Petrozzo. “But the majority of the world is NOT using Ethereum and does not have a MetaMask wallet and certainly has no idea what a DAO is.”

Petrozzo said the DAO may have shown their hand with the amount they had access to spend, which made it hard to win.

Related Link: Exclusive: Rally Rd Founder On Video Games, Apple Assets And Growth For Fractional Investing 

Declaration of Independence Asset: Rally Rd is offering fractional investments in a Fowle printing of the Declaration of Independence it acquired in November 2020. Rally customers can buy shares for $25 each with a valuation on the asset of $2 million.

“The main reason for the delta between the Rally Declaration of Independence and the Constitution bid on by ConstitutionDAO is that we have a specific set of guidelines under which we acquire assets based on data, which in this case spoke to the valuation on Rally,” Petrozzo said.

Petrozzo told Benzinga this copy of the Declaration of Independence exchanged hands very few times and this marks the first “public sale” of the asset. This particular copy was displayed at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia from 2009 to 2012. Rally plans on displaying the Declaration of Independence at its Soho Museum in New York.

The asset is considered to be in “Fine” condition and is one of 9-10 Fowle Printing editions and one of around 20 total copies. Only 11 contemporary broadsides have been sold in the past two decades, according to Petrozzo.

Similar to offering investments in a T206 Honus Wagner card and early Super Mario Brothers games, the Declaration of Independence was at the top of Rally’s list when it wanted to launch political memorabilia.

“Whenever we consider a new asset category, we want to ensure we can provide the most unique examples of museum worthy items as keystones for that category.”

Rally Rd is selling 80,000 shares of the Declaration of Independence asset. Existing Rally users had early access to invest prior to Friday’s public sale. At the time of writing, the asset is 88% funded.

“We had enough of a market cap to work with to get our most loyal investors in at their own pace without needing to rush in on opening day.”

What’s Next: Well known for offering fractional investments in trading cards, sports memorabilia, cars, wine and first edition books, Rally Rd has branched out into new categories to change the world of fractional investing.

Rally launched its first non-fungible token asset sale recently with the offering of a CryptoPunk. Rally has since listed several Punks and several Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. More NFTs appear on the Rally Rd app as “coming soon.”

Rally has also launched several Apple Inc AAPL related assets including an original iPod and an original Macintosh II computer signed by Steve Jobs, which has seen its value go up 3x.

“The Steve Jobs items and vintage items have been amongst our most popular and our biggest returns from initial offerings to present day,” Petrozzo told Benzinga.

More Apple items are being requested by users and some will be added to the platform soon.

“As we continue to see younger investors onboard into the new forms of art and entertainment, it’s exciting to think about what the future holds for alternative assets.”

Petrozzo said it was important to add NFTs to give users more opportunities to diversify with their investments and also offer access for the average investor to use cash and avoid gas fees. Along with adding more NFTs, Rally will be adding domain names and real estate in the future.