Thrift Store "Junkie" Buys Copy of Declaration of Independence that Could Fetch Fortune

Set for auction next month, artifact was donated last year by family cleaning garage

A Nashville, Tennessee man has won what may be the thrift store treasure hunter's equivalent of a lottery jackpot: a $2.48 purchase estimated to be worth 100,000 times that sum. And his treasure isn't just any old rare find.

Set to hit the auction block next month is a 184-year-old copy of the Declaration of Independence. The Associated Press reports that it was purchased last March by Michael Sparks (pictured), a music equipment technician. Sparks said he found the document while browsing at Music City Thrift. When he asked the price on a yellowed, shellacked, rolled-up document, the clerk marked it at $2.48.

It turned out to be an "official copy" of the Declaration of Independence - one of 200 commissioned by John Quincy Adams in 1820.

"I saw that it said 1823 and I knew that the declaration was 1776, and I was just interested. It also said 'by order of the government,'" Sparks said. But he didn't know he had such a valuable piece until he did some online research and then had appraisers at Raynors' offer an opinion.

As the The Tennessean is reporting, the old adage of one man's trash being another man's treasure really is true. The document was donated to the thrift store by Stan Caffy, of nearby Donelson Hills.

According to the paper, the document had been hanging in Caffy's garage since he purchased it 10 years ago. When he married his wife, Linda, last year, the self-professed thrift store "junkie" set about purging his garage to make way for the merging of two households.

"I used to be a packrat but now I am trying to get rid of things. The best I can recall, we had a little debate about whether to keep it (the Declaration) or donate it and she won."

So Linda took a pile of Stan's stuff, including the Declaration, to Music City Thrift last March.

That was the end of it until this week when Stan heard a mention of the Declaration miraculously turning up in a thrift store on Gerry House’s morning show on WSIX-FM.

"I'm happy for the Sparks guy," Stan told The Tennessean. "If I still had it, it would still be hanging here in the garage and I still wouldn't know it was worth all that. It is just life. So I'm not really upset. But you can’t help but feel not very smart for doing it."

Yet another reason why some people NEVER throw anything away!

(Photo: The Tenneseean)