1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic sells in Dublin for $162,000 - VIDEO

Ah yes democracy for sale.

By the way – a census of original Easter 1916 copies of the Proclamation is under way ahead of the centenary year 2016. So if you know anyone claiming to have an original copy, get them to contact the Irish Govt (search online for contact info). At present, it is believed that there only 12 copies of the original Easter 1916 print-off in existence: eight in Dublin, one in Belfast and three in the USA.

I hope the buyer of this copy of the Proclamation checked it is an actual original from the Easter 1916 printing. There were about 1000 original copies printed then for distribution around Dublin City and Ireland, most of which have been lost or destroyed. Copies were made in 1917 on the anniversary of the event but these are also sold as originals which they are not. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Proclamation was re-printed again and many of these copies were said to be originals of 1916; in other words they are fake copies. A clear distinction was found between the Easter 1916 originals and those of later years... the typeface used in the fake original copies contained typeface fonts that were not in existence in 1916. In fact, on Easter weekend 1916, it was found there were not enough letters available to set in the print block to print the document in one ‘go’, so it had to be printed in two halves – top and lower. And how would you know a 1916 original copy from later copies? In the word “THE” in the heading ‘THE PROVISIONAL (Govt) … TO THE PEOPLE (of Ireland)...” the two ‘E’s are different, one being an ‘F’ touched up to look like an E whereas the fakes are identical ‘E’s. Both letters ‘R’ in ‘Irish Republic’ have a blank dot in the tail whereas the fakes don’t. In the words “three hundred years” in the third paragraph of the Proclamation (in the ‘top half’), the letter ‘e’ is smaller than before and after these words in the document, although the small ‘e’ appears in the ‘lower half’ as well. Apparently, the man setting the print didn’t have enough ‘e’ blocks of his chosen font to insert into the ink block for these words and used a smaller, different font ‘e’. The fakes have standard sized ‘e’s throughout. >>> People reading the text of the Proclamation may be surprised to see that the Easter Rising was carried out by The Irish Republican Brotherhood, The Irish Volunteers and The Irish Citizens Army – and not by Sinn Féin.

A document such as this belongs in a secure archive for safekeeping for all the people of Ireland.

These important documents should never be in private hands.As Bythebay says it should be preserved and accessible to the public.

Awesome!