Joe Maddalena Presents Auction of Property of a Distinguished American Private Collector Part II Today

After the six million dollar sale of part I, Profiles in History, run by Joe Maddalena, is proud to announce the auction of The Property of a Distinguished American Private Collector Part II today, May 30th. This collection of letters and manuscripts is one of the greatest collections ever amassed. In the first sale a letter by Vincent van Gogh sold for $336,000 and a Thomas Jefferson letter sold for $300,000, Part II promises to be even bigger.

Highlights from the upcoming sale include, a letter from the Marquis de Sade in which he invites his lawyer for dinner to meet a "pretty Parisian" amid his financial upheavals; a letter from Ernest Hemingway on the newspaper business (pictured left); a letter from Mata Hari discussing her affair with a Russian spy; a Frank Sinatra letter from the filming of The Pride and the Passion in which he writes to Hollywood gossip columnist Jimmie Starr, glowing with pride about his first producer credit on the 1956 western Johnny Concho (pictured below); A Billie Holiday letter in which she begs syndicated columnist Walter Winchell to make a retraction in a damaging story about her drunkenness; a Louis Armstrong letter to an admiring fellow jazz trumpeter; aTy Cobb letter on his plans for his book on baseball fundamentals; a letter from Mohandas Gandhi in which just out of jail, he prays for world peace; a complete letter archive of Tsar Alexander II, who was a liberator of the serfs and major economic reformer for Russia; aThomas Edison handwritten laboratory notebook with eight hand drawn sketches; a Clark Gable letter in which he writes to estranged father about his budding
acting career, all these and many many more.

Other items include The Bastille Archive, a 75 year record of the French prison and symbol of the repressive French Crown, The Schlick Archive which is 56 letters written by nine of the greatest scientific figures of the 20th Century including Albert Einstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein andBertrand Russell all to Moritz Schlick, who was a German physicist and philosopher. There will also be additional letters by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Claude Monet, Alfred Nobel, George Gershwin, John Adams, Andrew Jackson and others.

For more information visit www.profilesinhistory.com