APPRAISER
You brought in a large collection of William Burroughs. Now, he was one of the most influential Beat writers, was friends with Kerouac, Ginsburg and so on, but he also had a local Kansas connection and background. Tell me about it a little.
GUEST
His local Kansas connection was my father-in-law, George Call, who lived in Lawrence, Kansas. And they both discovered at some point that they were real gun enthusiasts. And as they liked to go shooting, they also would have a drink or two and... and really spend time talking about literature and talking about guns a great deal.
APPRAISER
Well, you have a great collection here of signed and inscribed books. You have a wonderful picture of Burroughs with George, but then you have this T-shirt, and this really fascinated me, particularly pointing out these three holes. What are those? How did they get there?
GUEST
Those are bullet holes. I think it was in preparation for a show Burroughs was having. And they were going to be selling these t-shirts but they had a great deal of fun.
APPRAISER
And of course, one of the things that when you really get into Burroughs is, of course, his wife in Mexico...
GUEST
Yes.
APPRAISER
...They had been drinking, they decided to play William Tell, he ended up shooting her in the head.
GUEST
It's a tragic story.
APPRAISER
I guess he also had good Mexican lawyers, because he got out. So, having a T-shirt of William Burroughs with bullet holes in the head is even more significant. Tell me about this piece of art.
GUEST
Well, that's a piece of PVC pipe that Burroughs painted from his series called Naked Angels, and he gave that to George and autographed it.
APPRAISER
You have about 13 books that are not necessarily first editions-- some are-- but they're all very nicely inscribed by Burroughs. The 13 books are probably worth about $2,500 to $3,500 as a group. You have a bullet-holed T-shirt of Burroughs that I... it's hard to put a price on that, but I would think that that would run into the hundreds, if not more. I made a phone call to my office to try to figure out what Burroughs' art is worth. The only piece we could find was about $12,000. I think that was a little bigger than this. I would say this is maybe $3,000 to $5,000. So, you have a collection here that's probably worth $7,000 to $10,000 at a minimum, but the story with it is absolutely wonderful.
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