“When he got excited about something, he got excited about it in a big way,” says his son Kip Forbes, vice chairman of the eponymous publishing company. “You never knew what he,d come back with.” Now, 11 years after Malcolm’s death, the Forbes family is selling off a portion of his treasures, including 500 of 4,000 American historical documents , among them, the 12-page handwritten manuscript of Abraham Lincoln’s last address , and 80 items from his 350-piece Fabergé collection. Christie’s held the first document auction last month. The Forbes family is selling the items in part to free up space in the gallery in the company’s New York headquarters. After all, Kip needs room for his collection of Napoleon III artifacts, and his brother, erstwhile U.S. presidential can- didate Steve Forbes, boasts a formidable collection of Churchilliana. Says Kip, “We want to show off what the next generation has been up to.”
