King’s Ransom: Auctioning Elvis : A 50-Cent Gift Certificate Worth $500? Presley Memorabilia on Display This Week
The world’s largest individually owned collection of Elvis Presley memorabilia goes on display here Wednesday, a preliminary step in the international process of auctioning more than 600 items the music legend once owned or inspired.
The King’s blue suede shoes won’t be on the block at Butterfield & Butterfield, but some of his other personal belongings will, including his wedding band, a Bible, his American Express card, his parents’ marriage license and even the birth record kept by the doctor who delivered him.
The collection, from Elvis museum owner Jimmy Velvet, will be on display at Butterfield & Butterfield’s Los Angeles gallery Wednesday through Sunday before it previews in London and San Francisco and is auctioned off on June 18 and 19 at the Las Vegas Hilton.
Rock fans will be able to see Presley’s wedding photo album, his corduroy smoking jacket, two cars he once owned and even an artificial tree that once decorated his living room at Graceland.
While sale organizers estimate the singer’s birth record will sell for up to $80,000, relatively inexpensive promotional materials also will be sold, and the collection includes some of Presley’s paintings and television sets. Perhaps the oddest item is a 50-cent McDonald’s gift certificate Presley gave his cousin Billy Smith for Christmas as a joke. Auction organizers think it will fetch between $500 and $700.
“We’ve had a lot of interest already, and the catalogue has only been out a week,” said Donna Humphrey, Butterfield & Butterfield’s memorabilia specialist in charge of the sale. “The interest we’ve had has been from serious collectors. . . . There are things that fans can afford. Elvis has broad appeal.”
Velvet, a musician and friend of Presley who changed his name from Jimmy Tennant after recording “Blue Velvet” in 1957, set up his first Elvis museum in Memphis in 1978, a year after the singer died.
“I had some things he had given me over the years, and when we opened in 1978, people started (selling) us things,” Velvet says. “Back in those days I was buying everything.”
Velvet spent an estimated $6 million building a collection he says is second only to the one at Graceland, Presley’s Memphis home that is now the rock legend’s shrine, and Velvet eventually opened Elvis museums in Honolulu, Orlando, Nashville and Kissimmee, Fla. Velvet has consolidated his operation and now operates two Legends and Superstars Hall of Fame entertainment museums in Nashville and Branson, Mo.
Velvet bought much of his collection, including one of Presley’s Bibles and his Mercedes-Benz limousine, at auctions or from collectors, but he bought many of the King’s more personal items from people who had known him.
Seven days before Presley died, according to Velvet, he gave his platinum and diamond wedding band--long believed to be lost--to his stepbrother David Stanley and Stanley’s wife, Angie, in the hope that it would help their marriage. It didn’t, and Angie sold the ring to Velvet in 1982.
One of the gems of the collection--and the item with the most interesting story behind it--is the record of Presley’s birth kept by William Robert Hunt, the doctor who delivered him.
Two days after Velvet read in the Memphis Press-Scimitar that the doctor’s daughter had inherited it, he went to her house to buy it from her. He was too late--the record had been stolen the night before.
“I thought, ‘They didn’t steal this to burn it,’ ” Velvet says. “Some day it’s going to pop up.” He agreed to buy the record from her, giving her half of what he describes as a very low price. When the record surfaced in a museum two years later, he proved it was his and added it to his collection.
Velvet isn’t sure who will buy the items in his collection, but he says interest in Presley is always strong.
“Elvis is a legend,” Velvet says. “This is a fantastic opportunity for restaurants chains and museums to (buy things) to draw crowds to their own businesses.”
The Elvis Presley Museum Collection will be displayed at Butterfield & Butterfield, 7601 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. (213) 850-7500, ext. 251.