Water From Elvis Cup Auctioned

[Jolie Rouge]

:rolleyes:

Man Auctions Water From Cup Elvis Used

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BELMONT, N.C. (AP) - Wade Jones is a fan of Elvis Presley, but says he's not a fanatic. That's why - after a grilled cheese sandwich said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary sold on eBay for $28,000 - he decided to sell three tablespoons of water from a cup that Jones said was used by Presley during a 1977 concert. ``It's one thing to be an Elvis fan, but then you tell them you have this cup of water and they think you're a fanatic,'' he said. ``I'm not like the people bidding on this water.''

The water fetched $455 Saturday at the online auction.

Jones was 13 when he watched Presley perform in February 1977 at the Charlotte Coliseum, now the Cricket Arena. He says he watched Elvis drink from the cup while he introduced the band. After the show, Jones went to the stage to snag a souvenir - perhaps a scarf that Presley would throw to his audience. When police wouldn't give him one, he asked for the cup and water. He stored the cup in a deep freezer for eight years, then melted the ice and transferred the water to a glass vial.


As proof of the water's authenticity, Jones provides photos of Presley during the concert in which several plastic foam cups can be seen on a stand behind him. Another photo shows Presley holding a cup. ``I'm kind of attached to the cup,'' Jones said. ``I thought it was a little quirkier to sell the water.''



12/28/04 08:15


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[Jolie Rouge]

The sweet smell of excess
Fri Feb 4, 2005
By Maria Puente, USA TODAY [/i]

It's a good thing Elvis has left the building, because even he might be dumbfounded by a freakish fad: public auctions featuring weird celebrity ephemera.

Such as the 3 tablespoons of water said to have been touched by The King at a 1977 concert, which recently sold on eBay for $455. Then, someone else paid thousands for a "guest appearance" by the cup that held the water from which Elvis sipped nearly 30 years ago.


In recent years, someone paid nearly $1,500 for a billiard ball from Elvis' pool table. A hanging macramé plant holder from Graceland, complete with a plastic fern, went for $633. And someone else paid $748 for a tree limb that "mysteriously" broke off and fell to the ground during Presley's funeral at Graceland in 1977.


We all know that Elvis' fans can be wacky, and Elvis himself has pride of place in the dead-celebrities pantheon. But does that explain the excitement surrounding the Feb. 15-17 tag sale of ordinary household items that belonged to the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis? (Related story: Nothing too icky to sell http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-02-03-celeb-auctions-side_x.htm )


Sotheby's expects to raise at least $1 million auctioning such things as her glass jars, wicker baskets, duck decoys and dirty oven mitts. And some experts think that estimate is way low - that many items will go for 10 times the estimates. Spending big bucks on an authentic antique that once belonged to the Kennedys is one thing, but spending hundreds of dollars for a couple of Jackie's Mason jars? "There are a lot of bored and lonely people out there, and this would be their one little thing they can say was once part of a Kennedy estate," says Lynn Dralle, author of The 100 Best Things I've Sold on eBay.


Or perhaps it's a grotesque manifestation of "celebrity worship syndrome," which some experts think affects a growing number of people in our celebrity-saturated culture. A recent study of the fascination with the famous suggests that the human need for ritualized idol worship has been transferred to celebrities, and in some cases can amount to psychotic behavior. "Once you start becoming addicted to having to have information about your favorite celebrity, you need more and more extreme things to feel connected," says James Houran, a psychologist and co-author of Celebrity Worshippers: Inside the Minds of Stargazers. "You buy their personal effects even if they have no intrinsic value - anything to give the illusion or feed the feeling of having a close personal connection to the celebrity."


A boom in collecting

Whatever the motivations, there's no doubt the celebrity auction business is growing. Star auctions have not taken over the high-end auction houses - paintings and jewelry remain the top moneymakers - but there are more celebrity auctions than 20 years ago and they have helped broaden the pool of buyers beyond wealthy collectors and investors.


A decade ago, the major houses conducted one or two Hollywood or rock-memorabilia auctions a year; today they each do up to a half-dozen a year - and that doesn't count the scores more at regional auction houses and on eBay. Meanwhile, collecting in general is now an estimated $120 billion industry worldwide, with 110 million collectors just in the USA. But lately it seems some celebrity auctions have crossed into the realms of the creepy and icky. Like the time an empty hair-color bottle used by Kurt Cobain sold for $175. Even august Christie's once sold George Harrison's half-eaten toast.


At least Elvis, Jackie, Kurt and George aren't around to watch the gavel come down on their most prosaic or intimate possessions. No such luck for some very much alive celebrities who have been the subjects of bizarre auctions: In recent years, people have tried or succeeded in auctioning chewing gum said to have been discarded by Britney Spears; a cough drop supposedly spit out by Arnold Schwarzenegger; what are said to be the baby teeth of Jack Nicholson; and the dirty socks of Bryan Adams. "People put celebrities on such a high pedestal that they'll get whatever they can, if they're real fans, ultimate fans," says Dana Hawkes, head of collectibles for Bonhams & Butterfields. (Bonhams once auctioned off the contents of Elton John's London trash.) "In the past, no one ever thought of selling dirty socks, but now they realize someone will actually buy them."


But imagine how strange it must be if you're the celebrity object of this kind of attention, says David Redden, vice chairman and auctioneer of Sotheby's, site of numerous celebrity sales in recent years. "There's the peculiar business of not being able to touch anything without it somehow being invested with your personality in some fashion, so you end up not wanting to touch anything," he says.


Maybe that was Justin Timberlake's mistake back in 2000, when he made an appearance on a New York radio station and failed to finish the French toast he was served. The partially eaten toast sold on eBay for more than $3,100.


What is going on here?

Why, for example, would Chas Welch, 31, of Atlanta, frame a napkin from Prince's 1996 wedding, which is printed with the mysterious symbol the rock star was using as his name? "It's a connection to the person that no one else can have," Welch says. "That's what motivates collectors - they want that feeling that they're the most important person in the world."


But what about Wade Jones, 40, a Charlotte salesman, who kept -for 27 years -a cup of water Elvis drank from? "It was my birthday, I was 13; it was a big deal to get to see him," says Jones, who grabbed the cup from the stage after the concert. "As soon as I got home, I put Saran Wrap on it with a rubber band and put it in a deep freezer."

Cut to November 2004 and the great cheese sandwich sale, in which a half-eaten cheese sandwich said to bear an image of the Virgin Mary sold on eBay for $28,000. A light went off in Jones' head, and he decided to auction the remaining water. He kept the plastic foam cup and decided he could auction "appearances" by the cup.

Who would buy such a thing?

Kyla Duffy, 26, a former pro-snowboarder in Boulder, Colo. She bid $305 and then paid thousands more to bring Jones and his cup to Boulder last week to appear at an event she organized to raise money for celiac disease research. "It's a fun way to bring attention" to the cause, Duffy says. Laughing, she adds: "The cup has brought joy to (Jones') life. And it's certainly brought a lot of joy and laughter to my life in the last few weeks, just talking to people about it."


Keep in mind that humans have been doing this forever. The Catholic Church collected saints' body parts for nearly 2,000 years and called them holy relics. Now celebrities have replaced the saints, the media help make them ubiquitous, and the Internet makes access to them and their stuff available to all.

Some celebrity items sell really big - for good reason. In December, Christie's auctioned a 1964 Gibson guitar once owned by George Harrison for nearly $600,000. Four years ago, John Lennon's piano went for $2 million (to singer George Michael).

Most fans can't afford that, but they might be able to afford ... dirty socks. A celebrity autograph used to be enough for most fans, but not anymore. "As wacky as it seems, they now have a piece of that celebrity," says Joseph Maddalena, CEO and founder of Profiles in History, which auctions Hollywood props and costumes. "People want Britney's bustier because every time they look at it, it gives them the same buzz."

Scarves and underwear

Meanwhile, the benefits of celebrity auctions are obvious to auction houses at a time when their pool of buyers is shrinking. "They don't get press when they sell a Chippendale table, and the great collectors who supported them for decades are disappearing," Maddalena says. "The only way to get new people is through hype."

Just as it is with sales of antiques and Old Masters paintings, provenance is all. Presley, for instance, often threw his sweaty scarves from the stage. Anyone can claim to have such a scarf, but if it's accompanied by the ticket stub and there are photos of the seller holding the scarf outside the venue, it's more likely to sell for eye-popping prices. "It has to have that personal association - something worn by a celebrity, or carried around with them or played by them," says Helen Bailey, head of popular entertainment auctions at Christie's, which recently sold a book report by Britney Spears for $1,600.

Also, dead celebrities are worth more than live ones. The owner of Johnny Carson's childhood home in Nebraska tried to sell it on eBay a few months ago, but now has listed it again and might have a better chance since Carson died Jan. 23. Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, members of The Beatles - these are the top of the food chain not just because they're icons but because they mostly died young and thus didn't have time to collect as much stuff.

An increasingly popular way of connecting to celebrities is to own a costume they wore or a prop they handled, which are easier to find because generally celebrities don't own them. But there are strange collectors in this category, too. "I've got one client, all he collects is socks - anybody's socks," says Dennis Riley, owner of hollywoodmoviecostumes.com.

"Oh, and Vin Diesel is huge - if he wore it, (customers) want it. We have his long underwear, but we won't sell it. It's weird. It's kind of immoral."


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[Jolie Rouge]

Posted 2/3/2005 9:48 PM

Nothing's too icky to sell
No celebrity is safe from potentially weird auctions.

Some of the odder offerings:


• More than a dozen auctions have appeared recently on eBay selling used chewing gum said to have been spit out by gum-snapping Britney Spears. One seller, asking for $99, claimed the gum "still has saliva on it!!!" Another seller, seeking a minimum bid of $19.99, claimed to have acquired the gum after Spears left it in a napkin on a table at a New York restaurant. The seller helpfully advised interested buyers: "Be careful, DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE FAKES OUT THERE." So not only is Spears' discarded gum marketable, so is fake Spears gum.

• Last May, someone on eBay claimed to have picked up a half-consumed cough drop pitched in a trash can by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The seller touted it as "Schwarzenegger's DNA." It didn't sell — but only because eBay nixed the auction as a violation of its "no body parts" rule.

• In 2001, a British auction show announced it would sell a set of 11 baby teeth and adult molars that supposedly belonged to Jack Nicholson. Producers did not explain how they acquired the teeth but claimed to have received offers close to 5,000 pounds (nearly $10,000).

There's no record that the auction went forward, and Nicholson isn't talking. But even if it was all a publicity stunt, it still has to be unnerving to hear about your teeth up for sale.

• In December, a pair of socks said to have been left behind by Bryan Adams after a charity concert in Wales, sold on eBay for 551 pounds (more than $1,000), even though selling unlaundered secondhand clothing is a no-no on eBay.

The seller: The local taxi service that transported Adams to the airport. The buyer: a woman in Birmingham, England, described by Bluestone Cars manager Ray Squire as a "very keen fan" who planned to wear them to one of Adams' concerts.

Go ahead and cringe, but at least the money raised went to a local cancer charity.


www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-02-03-celeb-auctions-side_x.htm