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Historys Greatest Picks with Mike Wolfe - Season 1 - Episode 02: Bad Money
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00:10I'm Mike Wolf and I've spent my life traveling the world chasing forgotten objects and the
00:16histories behind them. People everywhere are turning up artifacts every day often by chance
00:24and if you're lucky some of these finds can be worth serious money.
00:32Tonight on history's greatest picks. There are people out there who turn a good profit from bad money.
00:41We're talking artifacts connected to mobsters. Lansky's family argued he was actually given this
00:48medal in a secret ceremony at the White House. Outlaws. This car would be worth a bundle if you
00:56could actually find them. And even murderers. The signature is none other than Jack the Ripper.
01:03They say crime doesn't pay but these guys they know different.
01:11So sit back and let me tell you the stories behind some of history's greatest picks.
01:28Outlaws have always captured the public's imagination. And let's be honest. Notoriety sells.
01:35Take the Colt revolver Pat Garrett used to shoot Billy the Kid. In 2021 it went for more than six
01:42million dollars at auction. Making it the highest price paid ever for a gun. But a decade earlier
01:48another guy stumbles across his own piece of outlaw history and thought it just might make him a kill
01:54one two. The main character of this story is a man named Frank Abrams. He is something of an amateur
02:09photographer who also has an interest in antique photographs. Frank is poking around an old flea
02:16market and he sees this great old photograph with five old cowboys on it. The photo is a tin type
02:25which
02:25is an early type of photograph that could be printed relatively quickly directly onto metal. It's kind of
02:31the 1880s equivalent of a Polaroid. It's cheap but cost about 25 cents. So he buys that with a couple
02:38other
02:39photos for about $10 and he takes it and hangs it on the wall in his Airbnb. It's some old
02:46west whimsy.
02:48Then one day in 2011 he sees a story about a photo of Billy the Kid selling for $2.3
02:56million.
02:57And that's when he takes a closer look at his own tin type. One of the figures looks familiar.
03:07There's a guy in the front row in the far right and it looks like he's blinked because it's a
03:11six
03:12second exposure. He's a little gaunt. He's got an impressive mustache. As he zooms in on the photo
03:18he's looking around and he notices something written on the collar really tiny Pat Garrett.
03:26This is Pat Garrett.
03:31Pat Garrett was a law man, was involved famously in the Lincoln County War. Garrett is famous for
03:39his own exploits but you do not say the name Pat Garrett without saying another name.
03:43Billy the Kid who Garrett killed in the line of duty.
03:49The more Frank looks at that young guy in the back left of that photo, he starts comparing that kid
03:55to the kid in the photos and he's thinking wait a second they sort of wear the same cardigan.
04:01And when you look at them they also have the same sort of asymmetrical face.
04:07Really key is Billy's wearing this little pinky ring and in his photo that kid in the back left
04:13is also wearing a pinky ring. This could be Billy the Kid.
04:19Suddenly, this photo's getting a lot more interesting.
04:24That's when Abrams starts asking himself, if a photo of Billy the Kid alone is worth 2.3 million
04:30dollars, how much could one be worth that shows both Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett?
04:37But why would the most famous lawman in the Old West, Pat Garrett, be posing in the same photo
04:45with Billy the Kid? Then as he zooms into the upper left of the photo, he notices something else.
04:51Series of numbers. It's 8-02-80. It's August 2nd, 1880.
04:57And that date is actually really significant because at that point in time,
05:01Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, they're not enemies, they're friends.
05:07In the Old West, the border between lawman and outlaw was a porous one. Many men went from one
05:18side to the other and sometimes back again. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid drank together,
05:24they gambled together, they even went out and target practice together.
05:27But the relationship sours when Garrett becomes a lawman.
05:35And suddenly, Billy, his friend, the outlaw, can no longer be his friend. He has to bring him to justice.
05:44Garrett and associates come upon Billy, staying at the house of a friend. Billy hears a noise,
05:51famously asks PNS, who is he? The answer comes in the form of gunfire.
05:58And the short life of one of the American West's great outlaws comes to an end.
06:09Pat Garrett pockets 500 bucks for ending his old buddy's reign of terror,
06:15and even gets himself a shiny gold sheriff's badge out of the deal. As for Frank Abrams,
06:22that little flea market fine that he snagged for $10, the one showing both the killer and the killed,
06:27is now valued at more than $5 million bucks. And while Frank plans to hold on to it for now,
06:35he has finally taken it down from the wall of his Airbnb.
06:45Pat Garrett's gold sheriff's badge isn t the only piece of hardware pinned to a man
06:50with a murky past. There's another medal, one so controversial, it stayed secret for 75 years.
07:02It's 1997. Cynthia Duncan is going through items and heirlooms that belong to her grandparents.
07:11And among some of these items is a collection of bow ties from her grandfather.
07:16And a real surprise. Buried among the bow ties, she finds a medal. A United States Medal of Freedom.
07:29US Medal of Freedom is an award created by Harry Truman in 1945 to serve as a way to recognize
07:36citizens
07:37who had gone above and beyond during the Second World War. Cynthia's family has never talked about
07:43her grandfather receiving a medal of freedom. And apparently there's a good reason for that.
07:49Cynthia Duncan's grandfather is none other than the notorious gangster, Meyer Lansky. Not a guy
07:56that's known for his exceptional national service. He is one of the founders of a group called Murder Inc.,
08:04Murder Incorporated, which is said to be responsible for over a thousand contract killings.
08:11If you needed somebody murdered or tortured or persuaded in some other fashion, Lansky had a hand in it.
08:18He's also a part of what was known as the National Crime Syndicate, which was this group of Jewish and
08:24Italian gangsters.
08:25He was a senior leader of the American Mafia dating from the 30s all the way into the 70s.
08:32Why would someone of his background be awarded the Medal of Freedom?
08:38To answer that, the Lansky family looks back to December 7th, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked and America
08:47was pulled into World War II.
08:49After the war is joined, the United States initiates Operation Underworld, whereby we work with the Mafia,
08:55because we want to prevent them from working with enemy agents and saboteurs, and we need to keep the ports
09:00operating.
09:01And who controls the commercial seaports in the United States? Well, the president wouldn't like to admit it, but it's
09:07the mob.
09:08Now, at the time, the main man, the head of the five families in New York City of the Mafia
09:14is none other than Lucky Luciano.
09:17The Luciano's in prison. Second in command is Meyer Lansky.
09:22The Office of Naval Intelligence goes to Lansky, and they tell him, we need help in overseeing the American ports.
09:29The government has to suspend trying to shut down the mob and instead actively working with the mob to keep
09:36the ports operating.
09:38And during their time on these ports, nothing happens. No arson, no sabotage, no attacks. As smooth as clockwork. It's
09:47incredible.
09:51A year later, the feds ask another favor from Luciano and Lansky.
09:56In July 1943, the United States, along with the United Kingdom, launched Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily.
10:04And who do we have to cooperate with? Once again, the Mafia.
10:08So who better to assist the Allies with establishing a connection with the Sicilian Mafia than mobsters back home in
10:15the United States? Guys like Luciano.
10:17And he gives them basically a roadmap of you talk to this family about this, you talk to this family
10:22about that.
10:23But they're also talking to his man on the outside. It's Meyer Lansky.
10:27And so because of the efforts of Luciano and of Lansky, when the war is over, Luciano is allowed to
10:34leave prison, but he's deported to Italy.
10:37As for Lansky's efforts, it's said that he ends up going to the White House and receives a Medal of
10:45Freedom from Harry S. Truman.
10:47Now, in the National Archives, there is a list of every recipient of the Medal of Freedom.
10:55Lansky's name, though, never appears on that list.
10:58The family story is that there was a secret ceremony during which Meyer Lansky was presented the medal.
11:04So we can't talk to Harry Truman. We can't talk to Meyer Lansky.
11:07We can't talk to the people who could tell us exactly what happened.
11:10And what we're left with is a box full of bow ties and an example of the U.S. Medal
11:14of Freedom.
11:15But it's also one hell of a story.
11:21Nearly 60 years later, Lansky's long-lost Medal of Freedom surfaces in a box of bow ties.
11:27When it hits the auction block in 2022, bidding starts at just $250.
11:32And it climbs to $44,000 in less than three minutes.
11:36But his bow tie collection, they didn't make quite the same impact, selling for just $6,000.
11:51If fame sells, so does infamy.
11:54And some collectors will pay just about anything to own a piece of an outlaw's past.
12:00One guy paid over $112,000 for Clive Barrow's watch.
12:06And another was ready to drop $62,000 on a letter that was written by Al Capone from Alcatraz.
12:12But there's one collector by the name of Mark Love who's after something bigger.
12:21Every collector finds their way to collecting in a different way.
12:25Mark Love was born into it.
12:29His father is a Dillinger collector.
12:32He became a Dillinger collector.
12:34They were both obsessed with this folk crime figure that was John Dillinger.
12:42Love and his father collect a wide range of artifacts that are directly tied to Dillinger.
12:49His pistols or handcuffs from times he spent in jail right up to the very end of his life.
12:55They have his death mask.
12:57But there is one object that Mark and his dad were never able to find.
13:04A 1933 Ford V8 that Dillinger used in his breakout from prison.
13:11It had to be somewhere.
13:14They just had not found it yet.
13:16The story of the car that becomes Mark's obsession begins in 1934.
13:26Taken to Crown Point, Indiana.
13:28The Lake County Jail to be tried for the murder of a policeman.
13:31Happened during one of his many bank robberies.
13:35Dillinger was an infamous bank robber.
13:37And over time he also became something of a folk hero.
13:42Because when he robbed a bank he would not just take the money but destroy the mortgage records.
13:47So that the bank couldn't foreclose on your house.
13:50He's also got the charm and the good looks of a Hollywood movie star.
13:56Humphrey Bogart.
13:57It's said that when his image appears in newsreels.
14:01Cinema audiences actually stand up and applaud wildly.
14:04This desperate public enemy now rises to fame as an underworld hero.
14:09People called him the Robin Hood of the Great Depression.
14:14The truth of course is a lot less glamorous.
14:17This was essentially a psychopath who robbed from everybody for nobody but himself.
14:25And killed many of the people who got in his way.
14:28He's broken out of prison multiple times and that is about to happen again.
14:32Probably his most famous jailbreak is his escape from Lake County.
14:37And so using a gun that he carved out of wood but apparently was realistic enough to convince the guards.
14:44Dillinger bluffs his way out of prison and into a getaway vehicle.
14:51Dillinger speeds off.
14:55But here's the thing.
14:57Of all the cars they could have stolen, this one happened to belong to Lillian Hawley, the first female sheriff
15:04of Lake County, Indiana.
15:07But the car that allows Dillinger to escape prison also leads to his ultimate downfall.
15:14In escaping from Lake County, he does what?
15:18Crosses state lines.
15:21Which means that this is a federal matter that gives J. Edgar Hoover and his Bureau of Investigation the authority
15:27to go after him.
15:29Making him public enemy number one.
15:33They start picking off Dillinger's accomplices one by one.
15:40Dillinger comes to an end, perhaps fittingly, outside of a movie theater.
15:47Emerges only to be confronted and shot dead by government agents.
15:56As for the getaway car, in the 1940s, it sold off during a police auction and literally disappears from the
16:03face of the earth.
16:05There are even rumors that it's been scrapped.
16:08Meanwhile, anything associated with John Dillinger starts to take on enormous value.
16:14Even the blood-stained money from some of his robberies becomes very valuable.
16:20Theoretically, this car would be worth a bundle if you could actually find it.
16:26Mark Love spends a decade and thousands of dollars trying to track down the missing car.
16:32A major breakthrough comes when Mark hires a private detective who finds the car's VIN number in Maine's Department of
16:40Motor Vehicles.
16:41This is the lead he's been waiting for.
16:45Love heads to Maine.
16:47He finds the owner.
16:48The owner's father had actually bought the car at the auction in 1940, and it had been sitting in the
16:54garage all of this time.
16:55There had been some intention to restore it.
16:59Never quite get around it.
17:01And years go by.
17:02The car gets passed down from father to son, and eventually the son decides to plate it.
17:07And that's how the VIN number gets registered in Maine's database.
17:11After all these years, love finally finds the car, and then pours thousands into it, bringing that old V8 back
17:19to life.
17:26In 2021, he unveils the car in a parade that ends at the Lake County Jailhouse, where Dillinger once escaped.
17:36The original price tag, $605, and then in 2023, it sells for nearly $150,000.
17:51Dillinger's car stayed hidden for over 50 years, but the owner of the next item liked to bring it out
17:57at dinner parties to show his guests how a notorious Nazi general died.
18:09The location is the Nuremberg Trials.
18:15A guard makes a grisly discovery.
18:20A medic is called to the scene and sees a dead prisoner.
18:24On his lips are small particles of broken glass.
18:29A faint smell of almonds hangs in the air.
18:34And in the prisoner's cold, dead hand is a small brass canister.
18:42It is a German military-issue item the Waffen-SS contracted for the creation of this item.
18:49These little brass canisters are about two inches in height.
18:52They unscrew at the top, and they're just big enough to hold capsules of potassium cyanide.
18:59And these were issued to all SS officers as well as the Nazi leadership.
19:04The Nazi leadership has a lot to be scared of.
19:09If it looks like they're about to capture you, you better, by God, take that potassium cyanide.
19:13It can end a human life in a matter of minutes.
19:18And that dead man laying in the cell that smells like almonds.
19:22It's none other than Hermann Gรถring.
19:26Hitler's second command.
19:28The founder of the Gestapo.
19:30One of the most evil men in history.
19:35He's a convicted war criminal.
19:38Concentration camps was one of the things you found immediately necessary upon coming to power, is it not?
19:44Goring has been sentenced to death.
19:46He's set to be killed the next day.
19:49But he has decided to take matters into his own hands, beat the hangman, and take the coward's way out.
19:56Suicide.
19:57The real mystery is how did Goring, one of the most closely guarded prisoners on the planet at the time,
20:04get his hands on cyanide?
20:06There are a couple of theories about how this happened, and all of them involve the guards to some extent
20:12allowing it to happen.
20:13The most likely explanation is that he somehow smuggled it in, probably in a container of either hair cream or
20:22skin cream.
20:23The medic who examines Hermann Gรถring's body is a physician named Dr. John Latimer, who ends up being a collector
20:32of the macabre.
20:34So we don't know exactly how he got a hold of this canister, whether he grabbed it then and there
20:38or got it later.
20:40But in later years, he would show this and pull it out at dinner parties.
20:50In 2016, the brass canister goes up for auction in Munich.
20:55It sells to a South American collector of Nazi memorabilia for 26,000 euros, almost $30,000.
21:09Back in the day, step one for catching a bad guy was to issue a wanted poster.
21:13And over time, those same posters can become incredibly valuable.
21:18John Dillinger's sold at auction for more than $3,000.
21:22Jesse James, $57,000.
21:25But that is nothing compared to the most famous wanted poster ever issued in U.S. history.
21:38It's been six days.
21:40News from Washington, D.C. is spreading fast.
21:44John Wilkes Booth has just assassinated President Abraham Lincoln by shooting him in the back of the head at Ford's
21:52Theater in front of a packed audience.
21:56The war department is in a frenzy trying to track down this killer.
22:05So what they do is they issue what is called a broadside, which is basically a wanted poster.
22:13One of the main ways that the government got the word out.
22:18These broadsides were posted on the size of trees, on buildings, in the middle of town squares.
22:25Because they are rushing to get these out, they're made a little bit sloppily.
22:29There are no photographs.
22:31Instead, they're just these very vague descriptions.
22:33For example, John Wilkes Booth is described as having a heavy black mustache.
22:37And his accomplices, John Surratt, who is said to have protruding ears.
22:41David Harreld, who is described simply as chunky.
22:44And there's misspellings.
22:46Surratt is spelled with one T, not two.
22:49Harreld is actually spelled Harold.
22:51What's also interesting about this wanted poster is that it offers a reward.
22:59For the arrest of John Wilkes Booth, information that leads us to John Wilkes Booth,
23:03you will get paid $50,000 and $25,000 for each of his accomplices.
23:09It is worth millions in today's money.
23:12And it is very motivating for the public.
23:18It's easily one of the most iconic wanted posters in U.S. history.
23:23But the irony is, it had nothing to do with actually catching the man on it.
23:29John Wilkes Booth and David Harreld are hiding.
23:33And they're trying to make it for Confederate territory in Maryland and Virginia.
23:38Eventually, they head for a farm, the Garrett Farm.
23:42This seems like it might be a good place to hole up for a while.
23:46Garrett's, they've never seen the wanted posters.
23:49They haven't even heard that the president has been assassinated.
23:53And they have no idea that their farm is about to be the center of the biggest U.S. manhunt
23:59in history.
24:01But as it turns out, the posters were not particularly necessary because what actually happens is that a former Confederate
24:09soldier gives Booth up to the Union.
24:14John Wilkes Booth refuses to surrender, refuses to leave the barn.
24:18They set the barn on fire.
24:19And when he steps out, he is shot.
24:25As soon as Booth has been killed, the wanted posters are no longer relevant.
24:32But there is one poster that's nailed to a tree in Philadelphia that's taken down by a local.
24:38And this is a poster that will stay in that person's family and be passed down from generation to generation
24:46for the next 150 years.
24:53In 2023, the poster goes up for auction and the reserve is set at $100,000, but it doesn't stay
25:00there long.
25:01And when the hammer drops, it sells for an incredible $166,375.
25:10It's not surprising considering fewer than 20 copies are known to exist.
25:15And almost none of those are in this kind of condition.
25:27Collectors are always on the lookout for a pick with major value.
25:31But what if the find is stolen cash?
25:34That's what eight-year-old Brian Ingram discovers when a handful of old $20 bills turn out to be linked
25:40to one of America's greatest mysteries, the D.B. Cooper skyjacking.
25:51Eight-year-old Brian Ingram is with his family along the coast of the Columbia River, which is in Washington
25:58State.
26:00He starts digging like any eight-year-old kid would do, and he realizes something's buried here.
26:08He digs down, and he discovers cash hidden under the wet soil.
26:15And they are heavily degraded.
26:17They have been outside for seemingly a long time.
26:20There's no indication as to how they got there, where they're from.
26:24You can't even tell what denomination they are at first.
26:26But Jackson's face is still there, so they figure out that these are 20s that he has unearthed from the
26:32ground.
26:34Parents pretty quickly realize this is odd, and so they call the FBI.
26:42In total, there are about 290 bills.
26:45But because they're so water-damaged at this point that there are only 30 that are still intact.
26:51One critical clue to the mystery.
26:54The serial numbers on the bills are still intact.
26:57The serial numbers on a bill tells you where it was printed, when it was printed.
27:03You know, it gives you a ton of information.
27:06That discovery gives the FBI something they haven't had in almost 10 years, an actual lead in the D.B.
27:14Cooper mystery.
27:19Nine years earlier, a man buys an airplane ticket in cash, registers it under the name of Dan Cooper.
27:30When he boards the plane, he sits in the rear of the cabin, drinking a bourbon, very nonchalant.
27:36Normal business traveler, except that at some point on the flight, he calls the stewardess over, and he hands her
27:45a note.
27:46The note only has four words on it.
27:49I have a mom.
27:55And he shows her a briefcase with wires and these red sticks, maybe TNT, maybe.
28:03It's not clear, but when someone says they have a bomb on a plane, you take them pretty seriously.
28:09Cooper then demands $200,000 in cash, as well as parachutes, when the plane lands in Seattle.
28:18They do just that, although they do purposely give the money in 20s, so that it is these large, unwieldy
28:26cases of money.
28:27Cooper instructs the plane to take off once again, and the plane starts heading in a southwest direction.
28:34With the plane over southern Washington, he opens the rear door, launches himself into the darkness, and is never seen
28:45again.
28:46He disappears. The money disappears. No one is sure what happened. It basically becomes a total cold case.
28:58After the hijacking, there's obviously a press conference. Authorities come forward and identify the man as Dan Cooper.
29:05But a reporter misheard the name Dan Cooper and identifies him as D.B. Cooper.
29:13And that's the name that is stuck in the annals of history.
29:17The only bills ever recovered from the D.B. Cooper hijacking are the ones found by 8-year-old Brian
29:23Ingram.
29:25It immediately kicks off this long-lasting legal fight.
29:30The family of Brian Ingram is saying, we found the cash, so it belongs to us. But the Ingram family
29:39isn't the only one that is laying a claim to the cash.
29:41There's the airline. They say it's actually their property. There is the FBI, who says this is evidence and we
29:46need it.
29:47There is the insurance company, which had to do this major payout and said, we want to get paid back.
29:52Finally, a judge in a U.S. district court renders a verdict.
29:56FBI, you get $280 and the rest of the money is then split between the family and the insurance company.
30:03This leaves Brian's share as 138 tattered $20 bills worth exactly $2,760 in face value.
30:19Fast forward to 2006, Brian decides to put 15 of these bills up for auction.
30:26The only unsolved aviation air piracy case in U.S. history.
30:3275 has been with Heritage Live now say 8. There's 8 now go 85.
30:36They end up selling for $37,000, which is considerably more than their face value of just $300.
30:51Some family heirlooms tell their history, like the fragments of George Washington's coffin that sold for $12,000,
30:58while others have sentimental value, like a grandfather's baseball card collection that sold for more than half a million dollars.
31:06But one family's cardboard box carried clues to one of the most famous unsolved murder cases in history.
31:18A lot of families have these kinds of strange collections of heirlooms.
31:22Sometimes there's interesting stuff in there, sometimes they're just junk.
31:27There's a guy, he's an English guy, and he has a box like this, filled with family heirlooms.
31:32The family takes it to the local auctioneers for appraisal.
31:36At first, this just looks like a random jumble of papers and odds and ends, but when they start to
31:42look through the box,
31:43they find photographs, and one of those photographs looks like a dead body in a mortuary.
31:50And there's a pair of handcuffs.
31:52And then as you get deeper into this box, you come across facsimiles of a postcard and a letter.
32:02The original owner of this stuff was Henry Helsin, a police inspector with the J Division of the London Metropolitan
32:09Police.
32:10Over the years, Helsin keeps mementos from his work, including evidence from a case that began one morning in 1888,
32:18a case that would haunt investigators for generations.
32:31He's called to a murder scene, and it's extremely gruesome.
32:3747-year-old Mary Ann Nichols has been killed, her throat has been slashed, and she has been brutally mutilated.
32:45This is not the typical kind of murder scene.
32:49The murder takes place in Whitechapel, which is in the east end of London, which is a part of J
32:55Division's jurisdiction,
32:56which is why Henry Helsin is lead inspector on the case.
33:00Three days later, another body shows up.
33:0347-year-old Annie Chapman.
33:05It's a horrendous scene.
33:08So we have two bodies.
33:10We have the makings of a serial killer.
33:12Three weeks after these two murders, the Central News Agency receives a letter.
33:17The letter is addressed, Dear Boss.
33:21It's written in red ink, and it brags about a recent murder in the east end of London.
33:28The writer claims that he wanted to write the letter in blood, but the problem was it goes thick like
33:34glue.
33:36He threatens to clip off his next victim's ears.
33:41So the news agency, they tell the police, and they dismiss this as phony.
33:47Anyone can send a letter like this.
33:50A few days later, however, two more murders take place.
33:54Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, and part of Catherine's ears, have been sliced off.
34:02And the very next day, after these two additional murders, a postcard is sent to the Central News Agency.
34:10And this one is just as weird and horrible as the letter that came before.
34:17And this time, the writer in question refers to themselves as Saucy Jack.
34:23And like the letter, it brags and it gloats about the murder, and it also, you know, cheekily apologizes about,
34:30Sorry, I didn't have time to slice off the whole ear.
34:33I could only do half of it.
34:34I kind of ran out of time.
34:36And then the writer signs off Jack the Ripper.
34:43At this point, Scotland Yard takes over what's now being called the Whitechapel murders.
34:49And as the bodies continue to pile up, investigators release copies of both the letter and the postcard,
34:56hoping someone in the public might recognize the handwriting or even be able to identify Jack the Ripper.
35:05It does not work.
35:06It's still an open question about whether this letter, this postcard, actually came from Jack the Ripper.
35:12A lot of people thought those letters were hoaxes, maybe concocted by some editor who wanted to sell more newspapers.
35:19Over time, though, the case goes unsolved, and these items that were in the police files mysteriously go missing.
35:29And it is suggested that some people who work the case end up taking these files as souvenirs for themselves.
35:34Now, the original Dear Boss letter was returned to Scotland Yard anonymously almost 100 years later.
35:41But the only surviving copies of the Saucy Jack postcard are copies.
35:47They're facsimiles.
35:53And that is what Henry Helson has in his collection.
35:58Which means that when Detective Inspector Helson's great-grandson puts these items up for auction, this garners a lot of
36:07interest.
36:09In 1888, it cost just one penny to mail the original letter and postcard.
36:15135 years later, the copies sell for over 15,000 pounds, which works out to be around 21 grand.
36:31No 20th century president captured the public's imagination quite like JFK.
36:37And ever since his death, collectors have searched out anything connected to his assassination,
36:42from a section of the picket fence on the grassy knoll to a window from the Texas Book Depository.
36:48But no collectible is as haunting or as revealing as an uncashed paycheck.
37:02A check comes through the mail.
37:07It's for $43.37, issued by the Texas Book Depository.
37:15Signed by the secretary and the treasurer.
37:18And annotated in the bottom left-hand corner is a note saying that this is a check for four and
37:25one-half days of work.
37:28The check's date?
37:30December 3rd, which just happens to be 11 days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
37:38And the check is payable to one Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald.
37:4811 days earlier, Lee Harvey Oswald is at his job at the Texas Book Depository,
37:53where he is paid $1.25 an hour to fulfill orders.
37:59His job is to take invoices, go up to the 5th, 6th, 7th floor, grab books, to be shipped to
38:06schools or wherever they're going.
38:07He fills a box, the books, the invoice, takes them back down.
38:13That's his job.
38:14As we all know, the Texas Book Depository overlooks Dealey Plaza.
38:19Around noon, a police officer and the building superintendent rush into the Book Depository and pass Oswald, who is standing
38:29very calmly.
38:30A little bit later, one of Oswald's co-workers says to him that President John F. Kennedy has been shot.
38:41Very calmly, Oswald leaves work for the day, half a day early.
38:47Why?
38:48Because he had just shot and killed the president of the United States.
38:5648 hours and 7 minutes after the president steps, his accused slayer is dead.
39:03Oswald has been shot dead.
39:06The check arrives in the mail, addressed to his widow Marina, and it is for four and one half days.
39:12The assassination happens on a Friday.
39:14So he had worked Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, gets to work on Friday, and then shoots the president, leaves the
39:21building.
39:21So some bean counter at the Texas Book School Depository building makes it out for $43 and something.
39:26They still paid Lee Harvey Oswald, but they, you know, they clocked him out.
39:31So by the time Marina Oswald receives this check, she's now a recent widow, she's got a toddler, she's got
39:38another baby on the way.
39:39She needs the money, but she's being hounded by the press.
39:43Several magazines wanted her exclusive story, so Life Magazine got the exclusive story of Marina, and they put her in
39:50a hotel to keep her away from the rest of the press.
39:52She doesn't want to go to the bank to cash a check, and she asked her attorney at the time,
39:57John Thorne, to cash it for her.
39:59But he doesn't.
40:01He gives her the cash, $43.37, and hangs onto the check for himself.
40:08It tells a story of what happened on that tragic day.
40:12It's an artifact that gives us direct insight into the moment in time that something tragic but historically significant happened.
40:23Puts it into a file, it's never cashed because the lawyer isn't Mrs. Marina Oswald, can't go into a bank
40:28and cash it.
40:29So the check remains in Thorne's files.
40:32He eventually passes away in 1981, and it's his widow, Lois, who now is left to decide what to do
40:41with the check.
40:41This is 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald's last paycheck.
40:46In 2020, Lois decides to find out just how much she can cash in this check for.
40:52A huge moment in American history.
40:55Turns out the infamous $43.37 paycheck sells for $69,000.
41:10It just goes to show whether it's a pile of soggy $20 bills, a $10 photograph, or an autographed postcard.
41:19While crime doesn't pay, an artifact with a story sure does.
41:24And when it comes to collecting, there's no such thing as bad money.
41:28.
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