CHICAGO — The King may be dead, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to run your fingers through his hair.
Elvis Presley’s hair, at least a clump of hair that Presley may have lost to an Army barber when he went into the service back in 1958, is going on the auction block this Sunday at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago.
The hair is part of a collection of more than 200 items that belonged to or are associated with Presley. There are clothes he wore, scarves he threw to screaming fans — who, judging by the yellow sweat stains, never washed them — and Christmas cards he sent. There are lots of records and other sorts of memorabilia including Elvis dolls, Elvis wrist watches and Elvis Pez dispensers.
All the items belonged to Gary Pepper, a huge Presley fan and president of a Presley fan club.
Pepper, who had cerebral palsy, died in 1980, three years after Presley, and left his collection to his nurse, who is putting the items up for auction, said Mary Williams, of the auction house.
Like a lot of the items in Pepper’s collection, the hair was a gift from Presley to Pepper, who in turn sent a strand or two to appreciative Presley fans from time to time.
She said Pepper died without telling anyone exactly where the hair came from or when it was cut, but she said it appears that it was clipped during Presley’s stint in the Army or around that time.
Williams did acknowledge that there has never been a DNA test done on the hair. But, she said, the auction house did take it to “somewhat of a hair authenticator” who compared it to his own sample of Presley’s hair and concluded it was the real deal.
“I’m very careful with the hair I authenticate,” said John Reznikoff. He also has samples of hair that once sat atop some of the most famous heads in history, including George Washington Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe.
He says he even has some of Michael Jackson’s hair that was famously singed during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in 1984.
Williams said she doesn’t know what to expect, saying that the best estimate is that the hair is worth $8,000-$12,000. But, she quickly added, a few years back some of Presley’s hair that had been collected by his barber was put up for bid and sold for $115,000.
“The industry of hair collecting has blown up,” she said.
So, who would want it?
“There’s an interest in owning a piece of a celebrity,” she said.
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