Wondrous item, rare
Sealing a document with the ring takes wax and an action. From that moment, if any part of that document is altered — a word erased, a figure changed, a date corrected, a leaf taken out or put in — the impression cracks across the rope border. No reheating, restriking, or repair closes it, and the crack can be seen with the eye by anyone who is shown it.
Press your thumb to any seal of wax and the ring answers: it goes warm in your hand if that seal was struck by this ring itself, and stays cold if it was struck by a copy, a cast, a second matrix, or a hand engraving of the same device, however fine. It does not tell you which of those it was, or who holds it.
It knows nothing of what a document says. A false paper sealed with this ring is a false paper that has not been altered since sealing, and it will be received as sound in every office of this city, which is the greater part of what the ring is worth.
A cracked seal of this ring has been made to look whole in this hall by three several means, in the presence of the clerk of the sale room. The crack was under all three.
Source: Provenance — The Quist Sale