This June, Sotheby’s will present The Jay T. Snider Collection of Benjamin Franklin, a dedicated sale of 156 items related to one of the most consequential figures in American history. Carrying a combined estimate of $3 million to $4.5 million, the collection is described as the greatest private assembly of Franklin material to come to auction, spanning the full arc of his career through printed ephemera, books, letters, newspapers, almanacs, manuscripts and artifacts gathered over a lifetime by Jay T. Snider.
Highlights are unveiled in a special exhibition at the Library Company of Philadelphia until 7 May, the first time all of the material has been displayed together in the city Franklin called home. It then travels to New York for exhibition at Sotheby’s between 20 and 24 June, with the sale itself on 24 June 2026.
Organized chronologically, the sale traces Franklin’s career from his earliest years as a job and government printer through his work as a publisher, civic leader, scientist, postmaster, diplomat and statesman. A dedicated sequence documents his friendship with Mary “ Polly” Stevenson, whom he first met in 1757 while lodging in her mother’s London home. More than 150 letters passed between them over three decades, and she is thought to have visited his bedside when he died in Philadelphia in 1790. Material from that group includes letters, a portrait, candlesticks and an armchair, some not seen for over a century.
Jay T. Snider is an entrepreneur, executive and philanthropist, a former President of the Philadelphia Flyers and of Spectacor, who has pursued his passion for historical Americana across decades of collecting. The collection follows the January sale, during Sotheby’s Fine Manuscript and Printed Americana auction, of a letter from George Washington introducing the Marquis de Lafayette, which achieved $1 million.
Among the highlights on view are first editions of all three parts of Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity, issued between 1751 and 1754 (est. $75,000 to $125,000); an autograph letter to John Ladd of 12 June 1738, one of the earliest letters by Franklin to survive and the earliest to appear at auction (est. $40,000 to $60,000); the Pennsylvania General Loan Office Mortgage Register of 1729, Franklin’s first government printing job (est. $150,000 to $200,000); and a group of 347 Pennsylvania Hospital promissory notes printed with David Hall (est. $150,000 to $200,000).
Further highlights include an autograph letter to Joseph Galloway written from London in 1758 (est. $70,000 to $100,000); a 1787 letter to the French economist Abbé André Morellet (est. $80,000 to $120,000); a pair of German-language works by Conrad Beissel printed by Franklin (est. $70,000 to $100,000); a postmaster appointment countersigned by John Foxcroft (est. $18,000 to $25,000); a 1775 document signed as President of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety appointing Nicholas Biddle captain of the Franklin (est. $35,000 to $50,000); and a 1777 Revolutionary War letter by William Franklin, the last royal governor of New Jersey (est. $20,000 to $30,000).
(Press Release)
