By ERIC. C. RODENBERG
Antique Week Correspondent

GRANGER, Ind. — An infantry captain, preparing for his second deployment to Iraq, received an unexpected bonus June 16 when a book he paid $7 for nearly 20 years ago brought $80,000 at auction.

Indiana National Guard Capt. Nathan Harlan was 16 years old when he bought a rare leather-bound first edition of the first volume of The Federalist. The divorced father of three bought the leather-bound book, printed in 1788, at a South Bend, Ind., flea market.
It was one of those purchases that, depending on perspective, was a fluke; or may have been pre-destined, to hear Harlan tell the story.

“My mother found the book, and handed it to me,” he says. “We had just been studying about the Federalist era in history. I took one look at it and said, ‘I gotta get this book.’

“It was just amazing; it blew my mind,” Harlan told AntiqueWeek.
“To think that I bought this as a teenager, only because I was fascinated with what I had just learned in history. And then, to have this happen. I know it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

The staff at Heritage Auctions was also surprised. They had estimated the book to sell at $8-10,000, with maybe an outside chance that it would do $30,000. Heritage officials would only say that the buyer was a Baltimore resident, who paid $95,600, which included a 20 percent buyer’s premium.

But, definitely, one of the factors that increased the bids on Harlan’s book was a June 10, 1788 signature on the title page – Dr. David Stuart, a friend and confidante of George Washington.
The staff at Heritage did not disclose the signature until shortly before the auction ended.

“We didn’t want to announce that until we had confirmed his signature,” James Gannon, director of rare books, at Heritage said.
“But we were able to find and compare the signature … and it was Stuart’s … Anytime you get a connection with the Founding Fathers that’s going to give the item more gravitas. “

That – and the accompanying press the book received – accounted for more than 261,000 hits on the auction site.

“For an auction house to get that many hits is just phenomenal,” said Noah Fleisher, media and public relations liaison with Heritage Auctions.

Harlan was initially going to put the book on eBay, but at the last minute decided to log onto his computer to find out more about The Federalist.

“He saw that we sold the two-set volume, which belonged to a Revolutionary War soldier, for $261,000 (which also had a ‘Founding Fathers link.’)

That pretty much changed his mind,” Fleisher said. “Luckily, he decided to contact us.”

Harlan will receive the full hammer price, $80,000, with Heritage waiving the normal seller’s commission.

“We did that just in recognition of his service,” Fleisher said. “As a gesture to the military.”

The two-volume set of The Federalist – also widely known as The Federalist Papers – was published months after the Constitution was drafted in September 1787 in Philadelphia.

It is comprised of 86 essays, written  anonymously by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, urging the ratification of the Constitution. Writing under the pseudonym “Publius,” the authors not only endeavored to influence the vote in favor of ratification, but hoped to shape future interpretations of the Constitution.

The authorship of several of the essays has been the subject of an on-going dispute among scholars, despite assertions by Hamilton that he wrote nearly three-quarters of the two-volume book. Not too many days before his ultimately fatal gun duel with Aaron Burr, Hamilton provided his attorney with a list detailing the author of each essay.

“Generally, after all is said and done, The Federalist Papers are the most important book in American political philosophical history,” Gannon said. “We sold the book, Common Sense (by Thomas Paine) at this auction. It was a second edition and brought $47,500 … with a first edition Common Sense, you might be talking about a published work as important as The Federalist.”

Harlan, who will be leaving for Iraq around the last of July, says he is leaving the money in his bank account; at least, until he returns to the United States after nearly a year in service.
“I’ll just let it sit there and draw interest,” Harlan said. “It will be here when I get back.

Then, I want to pay some bills … it’s my goal to be debt free. Then, with anything left maybe I can invest in something.”

Harlan, said he may be predisposed to invest in another antique.