07-11-2009, 09:50 PM
By AVI SELK / The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/...110709dnme
trubybrain.43ee15c.html
Calling all Kennedy connoisseurs.If you've got John F. Kennedy
assassination fascination (and money to burn), Heritage Auction
Galleries wants you to come down today and get yourself some souvenirs
from Dallas' "weekend of destiny," as they call it.
The gallery's got a decade's worth of Jack Ruby remnants - from the hat
he lived in to the chains he died in.
They've got the autograph Kennedy signed just a few hours before he was
shot. "Chillingly historic," as the gallery's entertainment director put
it.
Opening bids for the 1 p.m. auction are already sky-high - and expected
to go higher.
Fashionistas can bid on the full Ruby ensemble - fedora, shackles and an
X-ray of his skull - for an opening price of less than $25,000.
Literati who'd like to curl up with an original police report of Ruby's
arrest might get it for as little as $6,000 - though the gallery doubts
that price will last.
And for the cost of a Camry (or two), you might even walk away with a
special edition of The Dallas Morning News - signed by Kennedy on his
way to that fateful motorcade.
So if morbid memorabilia's your thing, get out your titanium credit card
and get ready for some mid-holiday shopping: costly like Christmas - and
kind of creepy like Halloween.
1 hat: $21,000+
Before Ruby became infamous for gunning down Lee Harvey Oswald, the
nightclub owner was already famous for his trademark gray fedora.
"That was his thing," said Joyce Gordon, a former stripper who would see
her boss with the hat over his head whenever a roof wasn't.
The fedora was so distinct that when Gordon heard it described in a
breaking news report, she realized immediately that Ruby had gone rogue.
"They said over the radio a man in a gray felt hat had just shot
Oswald," she said.
"I said, 'Oh my God, he did it.' "
The hat has been around the block. Today's anonymous seller got it in
Las Vegas last year for a high bid of $61,000.
At least one collector in Beverly Hills says he will be sizing up the
hat today, though he didn't want his name used - lest a rival spoil his
chances.
It would complement his private collection, he said, which already
includes Oswald's bloody toe tag. ($83,000, if you're wondering.)
1 X-ray: $657+
If 20 grand seems steep for Ruby's hat, a few hundred bucks might get
you a peek inside his head.
January 1964 - Radiological technologist Shirley Davis suspected it
wouldn't be a normal day at her Dallas clinic when the doctor told her
she needed to be at work before dawn. And don't tell a soul, he said.
An hour after she arrived, in walked the sheriff and three armed
deputies, towing a handcuffed Jack Ruby in need of an X-ray.
Davis was a little nervous but mustered her courage and ordered the
police out of the room during the procedure - for their own safety, she
told them.
The killer turned out to be a lousy patient.
Even though he was ordered to lie still during the scans, Ruby couldn't
resist raising his head, ruining an X-ray. The doctor gave it to Davis
as a souvenir.
Four decades later, Davis, now Shirley Harter, had nearly forgotten
about the skull shot when her husband read about the auction in the
newspaper - and saw how much the fedora was worth.
"Do you still have that X-ray?" he asked.
1 chain: $3,000+
Harter doesn't know why Ruby needed X-rays that day. It might be related
to his lawyers' attempts to argue that a rare form of epilepsy made him
shoot Oswald.
If he'd come in a few months later, there's a chance the scan might have
caught the cancer growing inside him.
Three years later he lay dying in Parkland Memorial Hospital, his leg
chained to the bed.
But even before his death, the killer was already a commodity.
The shackles weren't to stop Ruby from escaping, according to the guard
who first put them on the market.
They were in case someone tried to steal his body.
1 front page: $24,000+
At a hotel in Fort Worth, Kennedy spared a minute from his last morning
on earth to autograph the front page of the day's newspaper for a maid.
"I think she caught him off guard," said Doug Norwine, the gallery's
entertainment director.
She might not have caught him at all if the president had opened the
paper before he signed it.
When Kennedy finally did so on his way to Dallas, he was dismayed to
read a full-page ad accusing him of selling corn to Communists, among
other evils.
According to the historian William Manchester, the president looked up
and asked his aide: "What kind of journalism do you call The Dallas
Morning News?"
The pricey kind, it turns out. Norwine said the maid's newspaper, worth
a nickel before it was autographed, shot up by $10,000 in the first
three days of advance bidding.
7 digits: priceless?
Not everything Ruby nets riches, alas.
Gordon still carries around a business card her boss gave her when they
met, with his number scribbled on the back.
She called Heritage a couple weeks before the auction, hoping to cash in
on the card, but the gallery didn't want it.
With an autograph, "it would be worth thousands," she said.
"But because Jack didn't sign the back of it, they said it was probably
worth little or nothing."
Lucky for Gordon, this isn't the 1960s.
"They told me I'd probably get more by putting it on eBay."
AUCTION INFO
About 700 pop-culture items, including the JFK memorabilia, are up for
bid today at Heritage Auction Galleries.
Location: 3500 Maple Ave., 17th Floor, Dallas
Time: 1 p.m., today
Online information and bidding: http://www.ha.com/c/index.zx
--
Regards, TOM BLACKWELL, PO Box 25403, Dallas, Texas 75225
http://DemocraticResearch.Org
thanks tom..:willy:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/...110709dnme
trubybrain.43ee15c.html
Calling all Kennedy connoisseurs.If you've got John F. Kennedy
assassination fascination (and money to burn), Heritage Auction
Galleries wants you to come down today and get yourself some souvenirs
from Dallas' "weekend of destiny," as they call it.
The gallery's got a decade's worth of Jack Ruby remnants - from the hat
he lived in to the chains he died in.
They've got the autograph Kennedy signed just a few hours before he was
shot. "Chillingly historic," as the gallery's entertainment director put
it.
Opening bids for the 1 p.m. auction are already sky-high - and expected
to go higher.
Fashionistas can bid on the full Ruby ensemble - fedora, shackles and an
X-ray of his skull - for an opening price of less than $25,000.
Literati who'd like to curl up with an original police report of Ruby's
arrest might get it for as little as $6,000 - though the gallery doubts
that price will last.
And for the cost of a Camry (or two), you might even walk away with a
special edition of The Dallas Morning News - signed by Kennedy on his
way to that fateful motorcade.
So if morbid memorabilia's your thing, get out your titanium credit card
and get ready for some mid-holiday shopping: costly like Christmas - and
kind of creepy like Halloween.
1 hat: $21,000+
Before Ruby became infamous for gunning down Lee Harvey Oswald, the
nightclub owner was already famous for his trademark gray fedora.
"That was his thing," said Joyce Gordon, a former stripper who would see
her boss with the hat over his head whenever a roof wasn't.
The fedora was so distinct that when Gordon heard it described in a
breaking news report, she realized immediately that Ruby had gone rogue.
"They said over the radio a man in a gray felt hat had just shot
Oswald," she said.
"I said, 'Oh my God, he did it.' "
The hat has been around the block. Today's anonymous seller got it in
Las Vegas last year for a high bid of $61,000.
At least one collector in Beverly Hills says he will be sizing up the
hat today, though he didn't want his name used - lest a rival spoil his
chances.
It would complement his private collection, he said, which already
includes Oswald's bloody toe tag. ($83,000, if you're wondering.)
1 X-ray: $657+
If 20 grand seems steep for Ruby's hat, a few hundred bucks might get
you a peek inside his head.
January 1964 - Radiological technologist Shirley Davis suspected it
wouldn't be a normal day at her Dallas clinic when the doctor told her
she needed to be at work before dawn. And don't tell a soul, he said.
An hour after she arrived, in walked the sheriff and three armed
deputies, towing a handcuffed Jack Ruby in need of an X-ray.
Davis was a little nervous but mustered her courage and ordered the
police out of the room during the procedure - for their own safety, she
told them.
The killer turned out to be a lousy patient.
Even though he was ordered to lie still during the scans, Ruby couldn't
resist raising his head, ruining an X-ray. The doctor gave it to Davis
as a souvenir.
Four decades later, Davis, now Shirley Harter, had nearly forgotten
about the skull shot when her husband read about the auction in the
newspaper - and saw how much the fedora was worth.
"Do you still have that X-ray?" he asked.
1 chain: $3,000+
Harter doesn't know why Ruby needed X-rays that day. It might be related
to his lawyers' attempts to argue that a rare form of epilepsy made him
shoot Oswald.
If he'd come in a few months later, there's a chance the scan might have
caught the cancer growing inside him.
Three years later he lay dying in Parkland Memorial Hospital, his leg
chained to the bed.
But even before his death, the killer was already a commodity.
The shackles weren't to stop Ruby from escaping, according to the guard
who first put them on the market.
They were in case someone tried to steal his body.
1 front page: $24,000+
At a hotel in Fort Worth, Kennedy spared a minute from his last morning
on earth to autograph the front page of the day's newspaper for a maid.
"I think she caught him off guard," said Doug Norwine, the gallery's
entertainment director.
She might not have caught him at all if the president had opened the
paper before he signed it.
When Kennedy finally did so on his way to Dallas, he was dismayed to
read a full-page ad accusing him of selling corn to Communists, among
other evils.
According to the historian William Manchester, the president looked up
and asked his aide: "What kind of journalism do you call The Dallas
Morning News?"
The pricey kind, it turns out. Norwine said the maid's newspaper, worth
a nickel before it was autographed, shot up by $10,000 in the first
three days of advance bidding.
7 digits: priceless?
Not everything Ruby nets riches, alas.
Gordon still carries around a business card her boss gave her when they
met, with his number scribbled on the back.
She called Heritage a couple weeks before the auction, hoping to cash in
on the card, but the gallery didn't want it.
With an autograph, "it would be worth thousands," she said.
"But because Jack didn't sign the back of it, they said it was probably
worth little or nothing."
Lucky for Gordon, this isn't the 1960s.
"They told me I'd probably get more by putting it on eBay."
AUCTION INFO
About 700 pop-culture items, including the JFK memorabilia, are up for
bid today at Heritage Auction Galleries.
Location: 3500 Maple Ave., 17th Floor, Dallas
Time: 1 p.m., today
Online information and bidding: http://www.ha.com/c/index.zx
--
Regards, TOM BLACKWELL, PO Box 25403, Dallas, Texas 75225
http://DemocraticResearch.Org
thanks tom..:willy: