November 8, 2007--Elvis, Alive On eBay

With the stock market in freefall, with equity in homes declining, with the dollar plunging against the Euro and Pound, with the Social Security system about to go broke as Baby Boomers begin to retire, is it any wonder we are worried about our finances?

I am far from the world’s leading authority on investing (I too am afraid to look at the mail from our broker), but there is a sure-thing out there waiting to be scooped up by right person.

Bidding on eBay right now is stalled at $8,300 for all of the memorabilia from the about-to-close Elvis Is Alive Museum.

Its owner and curator, Bill Beeny (sic) is getting on in years and he’s even having trouble maintaining the 16-foot-tall plywood likeness of the King which sits out front of the museum in Wright City, Missouri. According to the New York Times, Elvis’ left hip is starting to rot and paint is flaking off. The poker chips that Mr. Beeny used to simulate Elvis’ diamond-studded belt are one by one disappearing. Even all the original eyebrows on the Elvis replica in the open coffin, a museum highlight, have been plucked out by visitors. He’s had to resort, as he put it, “to paint them on there.” (Article linked below.)

But he’s OK that the Elvis in the coffin doesn’t anymore look like the real Elvis. Perhaps as a metaphor for the whole situation this is appropriate since, again to quote Bill, “It doesn’t look like Elvis, but [the again] neither did the guy in the casket.”

Now we’re getting closer to what’s at issue and why $8,300 for the works is a bargain. That’s because Mr. Beeny is not another of those kooks who claim to have seen Elvis recently in Wal-Mart or Burger King (as if the real Elvis would have been caught dead—sorry—alive in either of those places). No, he has incontrovertible DNA evidence that Elvis is still among us.

He became suspicious about Elvis being dead when he “learned’ that the body they buried, and said was Elvis, weighed only 170 pounds when we know he had ballooned up to at least 255. So he somehow got his hands on a sample of that corpse’s DNA and had it compared with, maybe, a hair sample of the actual Elvis. I say “maybe” because though Mr. Beeny has written two books about this (DNA Proves That Elvis Is Alive! being one) is vaguer than a true scientist would be about how he obtained either of the DNA samples. I assume he had to arrange to have the grave robbed in Graceland where the purported Elvis was/is interred.

But be that as any of this may, he is offering at auction all the contents from the museum—everything in a single lot. So if you are the highest bidder this means you will get the 16-foot Elvis sign (in “as-is” condition), all the newspaper clippings about everything having to do with his alleged death, an almost-impossible-to-hear recording that it is claimed Elvis made seven years after his “death,” a rusting 1977 Cadillac (not one of the dozens the ever-generous Elvis bought for members of his posse), and the eyebrowless Elvis replica and his coffin.

I call this a bargain and a good investment because, for those of us who believe he is in fact dead, there is a religion emerging with Elvis as the central holy figure. To see evidence of this all you need to do is go to Graceland and observe crypto-Elvis worshippers stuffing into the wall surrounding his mansion “prayers” written on slips of paper. Very much like what you can see at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. And if I’m right about this, how much will Mr. Beeny’s collection be worth when Elvis reappears at his Second Coming Concert at Caesar’s Palace?

I suspect more than your Fidelity account.