NEW YORK — When members of the local historical society in Berwick, Pa., found a dusty, long-ignored copy of Benjamin Franklin’s 18th-century “Poor Richard” almanac on their shelves a few months ago, they decided to find out whether it could be real. The answer was yes — emphatically confirmed Tuesday at the Sotheby’s auction house, where an anonymous bidder paid $556,500 for the 1733 edition, the second-highest price ever for a book printed in America.
Franklin, using the pseudonym Richard Saunders, printed thousands of copies of his almanac between 1733 and 1760, dispensing advice and aphorisms.
Sotheby’s said the almanac’s final price was exceeded only by the $1.4 million paid in 1990 for George Washington’s copy of the Federalist Papers. The Associated Press
