Alexander Graham Bell Letter Sells For Over $92,000

How much would you pay to own something written by the inventor of the telephone?

An 1878 letter from Alexander Graham Bell, that includes drawings on telephone safety, sold in Amherst for $92,856, according to The Associated Press. Bell writes to his parents about grounding their telephone to prevent damage from lightning strikes.

"If you have a good connection with a permanently moist stratum of earth, you need never fear lightning and your posts will be safe," Bell writes from Washington, D.C. 

This was in response to an earlier letter sent from his parents about how their wires had been damaged by a lightning strike.

The AP reports that bidding on the letter began at Amherst's RR Auction in December and ended earlier this month. RR Auction Vice President Bobby Livingston wouldn't name the top bidder, but he described him as "a prominent document collector in Texas who has an eye for the best stuff."

"You're not going to see a better Alexander Graham Bell on the market," Livingston said.

He said that the letter is valuable because of the extent of the writing and the detailed drawings within the seven-page letter.

The letter came from an archive kept by an associate of Bell's that had been in their family since 1910 before being purchased by a regular client of RRAuction.