some advise please old British documents

I have several of these ,I know they are original, they mostly relate to land sales and leases, my question is are these sellable here in US, there is no outlet for them here in the area I live

 

this dated 1880. and on heavy?waxed paper

 

They are usually on vellum. Look uo 'Indentures' on ebay sold items to see what the market is like.

I sold many of these on ebay up to ten years ago, but usually only pre 1800 examples, the older the better was my rule. I do not know what the situation is now.

 

Are you sure they are original? In the photo, the paper looks very white.

 

Are they hand written or printed? If printed the type of printing, ie offset or lead type, could be a clue.

 

They would be hand written. When typewriters came along they switched to typewriting. May are very fresh looking having spent almost all their existence in a deed box tied up in red tape.

The red tape used to tie up legal bundles led to the modern expression 'red tape' meaning a complicated official process.

They also always had a official revenue stamp, top left of the front page, and at least up to the mid 19th C were usually dated in terms of the year of the reign.

 

I was not thinking of a typewriter but perhaps lithographed as a standard content form with blank areas for specific details and signatures. Similar to modern contracts.

 

I would frame them and sell them but I'm a British store (in the US) so my peeps like that sort of thing. In general you need to invest in the framing to give them any value.

 

lithographed as a standard content form with blank areas for specific details and signatures. Similar to modern contracts.

They were always hand written on parchment or vellum, too many variables for a standard form to be useful,(the term indenture encompassed virtually any legally drawn agreement) and up to the end of the 19th C everything was hand written, and always indentures were done in what was referred to a 'clerkly hand', you had to be a very neat writer to get any kind of clerical job, although run of the mill paperwork was less elaborate.
It was also important to get it right first time, up to the end of the 19th C an eraser was a small very sharp knife to shave the parchment clean.

 

Hi,
I have a large vellum document written in 1843. The handwriting is superb one or two little corrections. I spent a lot of money on having it archived. I made one mistake which I would do all over again. There was one really deep crease which I lightly ironed. I should have done the entire document. I remember 40 years ago a large paint etc store in Manhattan had hundreds of old English folded documents for sale at 5 dollars each. The next week they had hundreds of original illustrations for magazines and dust jackets for sale for 6 bucks each. With in two days they were cleaned out. I think the store was Pearls Paints on Canal Street. I miss Manhattan.
greg