payment in over a year, Blagojevich had a $100,000 storage bill. The big winner was a life-sized Elvis statue, which gyrated for $20,500. Also sold was an Elvis concert picture from when he played in the Chicago Civic Center on February 16, 1957, a guitar clock with Elvis on it, and a poster of Elvis reading a book promoting American libraries.
The most morbid piece of Elvis-obelia was yanked before it ever had the chance of making its way into a coveted Elvis collection. A ghastly assortment of autopsy tools were pulled from a July 2010 Leslie Hindman auction. It had nothing to do with bad taste-their authenticity was in question.
Memphis Funeral Home president E.C. Daves told The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Tennessee that there’s no way to tell whether the items being offered for sale were authentic. Daves said that a retired embalmer claims he took the items after Presley’s embalming on August 16, 1977. But Daves says another employee told him the equipment was sterilized and used again. The items included rubber gloves, forceps, a comb, toe tag and eyeliner.
John Lennon got it wrong! It wasn’t the army that killed Elvis. The King always considered himself an entertainer, and by that standard, he dazzled until the end.
Although his style changed, and towards the end his pipes had grown raw, it never left him. He always brought it.
If anything was learned from doing the research for this article, Collector knows the depth and breadth of affection that millions of people have for the singer. Like so many oldies performers, he probably could have gone on for decades.
It neither a lack of talent nor fans that killed Elvis; it was death itself.
