The last time Christie’s sold a copy of a famed 15th-century pamphlet announcing Christopher Columbus’s first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was in 1992, and it did not end well. It later emerged that the document had been stolen, and it was eventually repatriated to Italy. The pamphlet Christie’s is auctioning off on Thursday comes from an anonymous private collection in Switzerland. This one, it says, has been investigated relentlessly to ensure it was neither stolen nor forged. He said that Christie’s had “covered all the bases” to authenticate this copy of the oft-stolen pamphlet.

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Persons: Christie’s, Christopher Columbus’s, ”, Jay Dillon Locations: Italy, Spain, Switzerland, New Jersey