Significant moments in history are often misremembered, even forgotten. Artifacts may be misplaced or discarded. For people like Nathan Raab, the misplaced and forgotten are his métier.
Raab is a principal at The Raab Collection, a Pennsylvania-based business that specializes in discovery, purchase, and selling of rare historical documents and artifacts. Those pieces have ranged from George Washington’s presidential address to Theodore Roosevelt’s “Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick” letter to Stephen Hawking’s first signed publishing contract.
Earlier this year, he was presented with an extreme rarity.
“The issue of discovery is that the rest of the world doesn’t know. It was sitting in some proverbial attic or basement,” Raab said. “It comes to us from the front line of discovery by people who find it themselves, and we identify what it is and why it is important. Then we alert the world. In cases where the world would have an interest.”…