Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="afantiques, post: 107242, member: 25"]50 years ago a British title deed was usually a bundle of deeds relating to the property dating back as far as they went, somtimes for several hundred years. Solicitor's offices would have deed boxes filed away for decades, even centuries with all this paper. Then the Land Registry was introduced. Gradually all land was included in the Land Registry records, and an entry in the records was legally equivalent to all those bundles of paper and parchment. Eventually, those obsolete documents were chucked out, some to the rubbish tip, others to auction rooms and from there they were sold piecemeal to anyone. I bought and sold many of them, even as late as 1999, they were fetching good prices on ebay, and I could be picky enough only to sell the 18th C and earlier ones, as you'd expect something dating from the 1600s was a big deal in the US market where I sold most of them. I think by now they have all left the solicitors offices and been dispersed. I still see some 19th C ones, and probably have a few still in the shed somewhere. Unless your document relates to the sale of Buckingham Palace to the Hitler family, it's really only likely to fetch that modest value quoted. No typewriters before 1900 or so, so all were hand written, reading them, especially the older ones, was training to read the very early ones. The style and phrasing of these documents was very conventional and the exact writing style very rigid and prescribed, so all 'scribes hands' looks pretty much the same. Once you are used to it, even if the document is in a totally foreign language, the style of the writing is glaringly obvious, and very difficult to fake. There was an example of a very poor condition but early document on the ebay art and collectables board a few months ago where the document could be authenticated and approximately dated just from the clerkly script.[/QUOTE]

Create my FREE Account!

Log in or Sign up

Reply to Thread

Useful Searches