LONDON -- A town council in England got quite a surprise when it discovered a highly valuable early edition of the Magna Carta in a scrapbook.
The discovery was made in a Victorian scrapbook by Kent County Council after an archivist set out to find an entirely different charter.
Even though a third of the document is missing and it's ripped, the edition is still estimated to be worth up to £10 million ($15 million).
The Magna Carta or Great Charter is a document from 1215 that was signed between King John and rebel barons. It was the first document that stated that everyone, including the king, was subject to the law.
Here's the first look of the Magna Carta edition found in #Maidstone http://t.co/OjMNsX8OSJ pic.twitter.com/SgKEHrGv0p— Kent Messenger (@KM_newsroom) February 9, 2015
The newly discovered copy, which is dated 1300, was found at the Kent History and Library Centre by Dr Mark Bateson, a community history officer, according to Kent Online. However, it originally belonged to the town of Sandwich.
Only 24 editions of the document are known to exist.
"It must have been much more widely distributed than previously thought because if Sandwich had one ... the chances are it went out to a lot of other towns," said Professor Nicolas Vincent of the University of East Anglia, who authenticated the document.
“And it is very likely that there are one or two out there somewhere that no one has spotted yet.”