Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

This belonged to my dad. Back in the 1970s, he used to do a lot of collecting Elvis merchandise, and where he got it, I have no idea.

APPRAISER

Where did his love for Elvis come from?

GUEST

Oh, it started with me. In 1964, I started collecting Elvis records, and then in the late '60s, I went into the service. And when I was in the service, he started collecting Elvis merchandise and it became a real hobby of his. He loved doing it.

APPRAISER

This one piece that we have in front of us is pretty great, and I think there's a number of things to talk about and why it's great,

and the first one is the date

February 6, 1955. It's an early poster, and one of the reasons we can tell that it's early is because if we check out the poster, who got top billing? Faron Young. And Elvis is all the way down here at the bottom, which is kind of hard for us to imagine now all these years later. These are not necessarily household names, the other artists on the bill, but obviously Elvis is the one that's endured.

This is his third single he'd just released on Sun Records

"Heartbreaker," and we've got the "Milk Cow Boogie." It's so early, he's still with Sun. He hadn't signed with Colonel Parker and RCA Records yet. At this time, he was really doing a lot of the Louisiana hayride-type regional concerts. Condition is obviously an issue here. We have some paper loss in the corners, a little tear here, a little discoloration, which you would expect on a poster of this age. It doesn't really matter that much because this is so rare. At auction, I would expect this poster to bring between $10,000 and $12,000.

GUEST

Really? Oh, thank you.

APPRAISER

Even in this condition.

GUEST

I never knew that, never.

APPRAISER

It's not an exceptionally graphic poster, but it is of that early kind of boxing style that a lot of people love from this era.

GUEST

Is that right? I would never guess that much, never.

APPRAISER

I've never seen one in person before.

GUEST

Really? Is that right?