Sparks, a music‑equipment technician, walked into Music City Thrift Store on a routine March 2006 trip and spotted a yellowed, rolled‑up paper among candelabras and salt‑and‑pepper shakers. He paid $2.48, the store’s standard price for such oddities, and later spent months scrutinizing the parchment, comparing ink and typeface with known examples.
The manuscript turned out to be a 1823 "Stone print"—the copper‑plate engraving by William J. Stone ordered by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Congress had commissioned 200 copies of the Declaration of Independence, of which only 35 were known to survive; Sparks’ find became the 36th confirmed copy in excellent condition.
Raynors' Historical Collectible Auctions in Burlington, North Carolina, opened the bidding at $125,000 before the final hammer closed at $477,650. The winning bid came from an anonymous telephone bidder, and the sale marked one of the most valuable thrift‑store discoveries in American history.
Sparks reflected on the windfall, noting that after taxes and auction commissions the $477,650 translates into a modest fortune. He credited the document’s earlier donation by Nashville resident Stan Caffy, who had kept the copy in his garage for ten years before giving it to the thrift store, as the chain of events that made the sale possible.