By Christa Woodall
NEW YORK — A newspaper publication of excerpts from the Book of Mormon is among the Mormon Americana items to be auctioned in New York on Thursday, Dec. 4.
“It”s really a very broad sale of items relating to America, going back as early as 1524,” said Jeremy Markowitz, a specialist in printed and manuscript Americana with Swann Galleries. “The Mormon material is more of a wildcard.”
Other high-profile LDS items to be auctioned off are a Welsh LDS hymnal and an original Book of Mormon. Having the three high-profile LDS items in one sale is coincidental, he said. All of the items came from different sources.
The rarest Mormon Americana item is the first publication of excerpts of the Book of Mormon printed in The Reflector, an old Palmyra newspaper. Markowitz said he has only located seven other copies of the papers, including copies owned by BYU, Yale and the New York Historical Society.
The client selling the newspapers is a member of a Broadway touring company who found the papers in an antique store in Michigan and bought them because he was from upstate New York, unaware of what he had obtained, Markowitz said.
The client brought 16 copies of The Reflector published from Dec. 1829 to Apr. 1830 in which parts of 1 Nephi ran as a series. It preceded the release of the Book of Mormon by three months.
“This sort of beat him [Joseph Smith] to the punch,” Markowitz said.
Markowitz said it is unclear whether The Reflector”s publisher used the Book of Mormon manuscripts or printed pages from the book as it was being published.
Smith had a problem with this and confronted the publisher, Markowitz said.
“According to Lucy Smith”s biography, they almost got into a fistfight, at which point the publisher agreed that he had no right to publish it,” Markowitz said.
“It has other Mormon references in it, most of which were pretty unflattering,” Markowitz said. In the papers, the publisher questions the “gold Bible” and other parts of Joseph Smith”s tales.
“They”re subtle,” Markowitz said. “He usually doesn”t come right out and say things.”
Markowitz said he estimates the copies of The Reflector will sell for $50,000 to $70,000.
“For high-level Mormon collecting, that”s pretty up there,” he said.
BYU purchased the only other copies sold in auction in 1968 for $6,750, Markowitz said. It was a part of the famous Thomas Streeter collection. Streeter was the most successful collector of printed and manuscript Americana.
Another client brought in a rare copy of the second LDS hymnal in Welsh with the inscription “Presented to President B. Young by John Davis, 1850.” Markowitz said it is in great condition.
Also in the auction is an original copy of the Book of Mormon. Markowitz said he could not disclose the seller.
He said the item is not exceedingly uncommon, but this copy is well preserved.
“You often find them in pretty rough shape,” he said.
