NEW YORK, NY.- This June, Sotheby’s will present The Jay T. Snider Collection of Benjamin Franklin, a dedicated sale comprising 156 items related to one of the most consequential figures in American history. With a combined estimate of $3 - 4.5 million, the collection is the greatest private assembly of Benjamin Franklin material ever to come to auction, spanning the full arc of his extraordinary career through the printed ephemera, books, letters, newspapers, almanacs, manuscripts and artifacts that one man, Jay T. Snider, has gathered over a lifetime of devoted collecting.

Highlights from the collection will be unveiled today in a special exhibition at the Library Company of Philadelphia until 7 May, marking the first time all of this material will have been displayed together in the city Franklin called home. It will then travel to New York for exhibition at Sotheby’s New York between 20 - 24 June. Full descriptions and photographs of all of the items on exhibition at the Library Company are available at sothebys.com.

Organized in chronological order, the sale traces Franklin’s multitudinous career from his earliest years as a job and government printer, through his work as a book and almanac publisher, civic leader and scientist, postmaster, diplomat, man of letters and elder statesman. Among the highlights is a special dedicated sequence of material documenting Franklin’s remarkable friendship with Mary “Polly” Stevenson, offering an intimate window into one of the most enduring friendships of his later years.

Jay T. Snider is an entrepreneur, executive and philanthropist whose deep roots in Philadelphia have long informed his engagement with American history and civic life. A former President of the Philadelphia Flyers NHL franchise and of Spectacor, Snider has pursued his passion for historical Americana across decades of collecting, with his collection focused specifically on not only Benjamin Franklin, but Philadelphia's foundational role in the American story. The collection is the culmination of that lifelong dedication and offers an illuminating portrait of Franklin, told through the primary documents and artifacts of the man himself.

The Jay T. Snider Collection of Benjamin Franklin follows the sale of a letter from the collection in January during Sotheby’s Fine Manuscript and Printed Americana Auction. Written by George Washington to Benjamin Franklin, the letter introduces the Marquis de Lafayette. Offered at Sotheby’s in January, it achieved $1 million.

Collection Highlights on View at The Library Company: Benjamin Franklin:

Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Parts I, II, and III
First editions of all three parts. London, E. Cave, 1751, 1753, 1754 Est. $75,000–125,000

Few scientific publications of the eighteenth century had as immediate and transformative an impact as Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity, issued in three parts between 1751 and 1754 by London printer E. Cave. Compiled from letters Franklin had sent to the Royal Society, the work established

him as one of the foremost scientific minds of his age, demonstrating through careful experimentation that lightning was electrical in nature and laying the theoretical groundwork for the lightning rod. The present collection offers first editions of all three parts together, bound in contemporary marbled boards, a remarkable survival that reflects the full scope of Franklin's electrical investigations in their original published form.

Benjamin Franklin Autograph Letter Signed to John Ladd [Philadelphia,] 12 June 1738
Est. $40,000–60,000

One of the earliest letters by Franklin to survive, and the earliest ever to appear at auction, this autograph letter concerns Ladd's purchase of books from Franklin's shop, offering a rare glimpse into his early years as a Philadelphia bookseller and printer.

Pennsylvania General Loan Office. Mortgage Register [Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin and Hugh Meredith, 1729] Est. $150,000–200,000

Among the earliest and most historically resonant items in the collection, this bound volume of partly printed mortgage forms represents Franklin’s first government printing job, serving as the official record of the mortgages that backed the 1729 Pennsylvania currency emission. The same year, Franklin and Hugh Meredith, Franklin’s earliest collaborator, would purchase the Pennsylvania Gazette, transforming it into one of the most influential newspapers in colonial America and cementing their partnership as a driving force in Philadelphia’s civic and intellectual life. Printed in partnership with Meredith, the register documents the young printer’s first entry into the world of public finance and colonial governance, a world he would go on to shape profoundly. The volume is bound in a contemporary paneled calf attributed to William Davies.

Benjamin Franklin. Pennsylvania Hospital Promissory Notes [Philadelphia, B. Franklin and D. Hall], 1751–1754 and 1764–1798 Est. $150,000–200,000

Franklin was among the founders of the Pennsylvania Hospital, established in 1751 as the first hospital in the American colonies, and this exceptional group of 347 promissory notes, 267 accomplished and 80 unaccomplished, documents the financial infrastructure that sustained the institution across nearly five decades. Printed by Franklin in partnership with David Hall, the notes span two distinct periods of the hospital's early history and represent a rare intersection of Franklin's roles as printer, civic founder and public benefactor. As a group they offer an unparalleled documentary record of one of colonial America's most significant philanthropic enterprises.

Benjamin Franklin Autograph Letter Signed to Joseph Galloway London, June 10, 1758 Est. $70,000–100,000

Writing from London during his first diplomatic mission to England, Franklin reports to his chief ally Joseph Galloway on his progress representing the Pennsylvania Assembly against the interests of the colonial Proprietors, Thomas and Richard Penn, who insisted their estates be exempt from taxation. The letter offers a vivid firsthand account of Franklin navigating the corridors of British power on behalf of the colonists he represented, anticipating by nearly two decades the more decisive break with Britain he would help engineer.

Benjamin Franklin Autograph Letter Signed to Abbé André Morellet Philadelphia, 1787 Est. $80,000–120,000

Written in 1787, just three years before his death, this letter finds Franklin reflecting on his return to America and addressing subjects including taxation and the Declaration of Independence, the document whose passage he had witnessed and helped bring about more than a decade earlier. His correspondent, the French economist and philosopher Abbé André Morellet, was among the leading intellectuals of the French Enlightenment, and the letter stands as a testament to the transatlantic network of ideas and friendships that Franklin had cultivated across a lifetime of public and intellectual life.

A Transatlantic Friendship Revealed Through Letters: Polly Stevenson & Benjamin Franklin

Among the most moving sequences in the collection is a dedicated group of material documenting the friendship between Franklin and Mary "Polly" Stevenson, one of the most enduring personal bonds of his later years. Franklin first met Polly in 1757, when he took lodgings in the London home of her mother during his first diplomatic mission to England. Over the following three decades, more than 150 letters passed between them, tracing a friendship that survived the American Revolution, Polly's marriage and widowhood, and the long Atlantic separation that defined so many of Franklin's closest relationships. She is thought to have visited his bedside when he died in Philadelphia in 1790.

The material offered here, including letters, a portrait, candlesticks and an armchair, presents a uniquely intimate portrait of their friendship with some not being seen for over 100 years. Highlights include:

Benjamin Franklin Autograph Letter Signed to Polly Stevenson Philadelphia, March 22, 1762
Last seen in 1920, in this letter Franklin writes to Polly about her studies, and includes a brief passage on electricity.

Benjamin Franklin Autograph Letter Signed to Polly Stevenson Passy, April 13, 1782
Autograph letter signed to Polly Stevenson, mostly on domestic topics, but looking forward to seeing “Peace & Good Will restored between our Countries. Est. $20,000–30,000

Polly Stevenson Autograph Letter Signed as Mary Hewson, to Benjamin Franklin Cheam, July 31, 1785
Autograph letter signed as Mary Hewson, to Benjamin Franklin, alluding to her planned emigration to America. Est. $2,000–3,000

Additional Highlights:

Conrad Beissel. Vorspiel der Neuen-Welt [bound with] Jacobs Kampff- und Ritter-Platz [Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, c. 1730s] Est. $70,000–100,000

Among the rarest imprints Franklin produced, this pair of German-language works by Conrad Beissel ranks among the earliest books printed in German in the British colonies. Beissel was the spiritual leader and music director of the Ephrata community, a German-speaking religious settlement he founded in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1732, and Franklin was among the few printers in the colonies equipped to serve its literary needs. Preserved in a contemporary Ephrata binding, the volumes represent a remarkable survival at the intersection of Franklin's printing career and the religious diversity of colonial Pennsylvania.

Benjamin Franklin Partially Printed Document Signed as Postmaster General Countersigned by John Foxcroft, appointing Abraham Hunt of Trenton, New Jersey, to the position of postmaster Est. $18,000–25,000

Franklin became postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737 and in 1753 was appointed one of two Deputy Postmasters-General for the colonies, a post he held until January 1774. Despite this lengthy tenure, postal appointments bearing his signature are of the greatest rarity: the Papers of Benjamin Franklin located just five colonial post-office commissions signed by Franklin beyond the present, all now in institutional collections.

Benjamin Franklin Document Signed as President of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety Appointing Nicholas Biddle Captain of the Franklin, a 6-gun schooner of the Continental Navy, 1775

Franklin served as President of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety only from 3 July 1775 until August 1776, making documents bearing his signature in this capacity exceptionally rare. The present appointment names Nicholas Biddle captain of the Franklin, a schooner fitted out from a Marblehead fishing vessel by order of George Washington, and bears the fine embossed paper seal of the Committee, its motto "This Is My Right & I Will Defend It" encircling a liberty cap. No other naval appointments signed by Franklin can be traced in the auction records.

William Franklin Autograph Letter Signed to Philip Skene Middletown, Connecticut, 19 January 1777 Est. $20,000–30,000

A rare Revolutionary War-date letter by William Franklin, the last royal governor of New Jersey, Loyalist leader, and acknowledged extra-marital son of Benjamin Franklin. Written in January 1777, the letter reveals the particular animus directed against Franklin by Patriot factions: he had been denounced by the Provincial Congress of New Jersey as an enemy to the liberties of the country. As a document of the fractured loyalties the Revolution imposed even within Franklin's own family, it is one of the more personally charged items in the collection.