John F. Kennedy Briefcase, ca. 1950
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APPRAISER:
Dawn, I appreciate you coming in today, and we have what looks like just an average man's briefcase, but apparently it's not.
GUEST:
(chuckles) It's not-- this briefcase belonged to John F. Kennedy, and, um, he frequented my uncle's cobbler shop on Beacon Hill in Boston when he was renting the apartment above. And, uh, came in for weekly shoe shines. And when he did that, he left this there, and no cell phones back then, my uncle couldn't get in touch with him. He came back for his, the next shoe shine, and my uncle tried to return it to him, and he said, "Oh, Charlie, I've, I've already replaced it-- just, you keep it." And, and inside were some handwritten notes, and his lunch of a liverwurst sandwich and an apple. And, uh, it's been in my family ever since. We think that was in the early '50s. And, um, it was then gifted to my father, because my uncle had no children. And when my father took this to school, he was taking it for show and tell, and, I think, to a history class, he told me, and it came home without the papers.
APPRAISER:
So the papers are history.
GUEST:
The papers are history.
APPRAISER:
So we're gonna take a look inside just to see what we have. And you can see inside we have the compartment where his lunch was...
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
...and his papers. You got that nice little deli smell. So we know it was a liverwurst sandwich.
GUEST:
(chuckling)
APPRAISER:
Could have been olive loaf, but not sure. When we look at things like this on the ROADSHOW, two words always come up, and that's provenance...
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
...and comparables.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
So the provenance is great. It's been in the family, you've had chain of custody for a long time. His initials are right here. So I'm fairly comfortable with the provenance as it being John F. Kennedy's briefcase. Comparables-- that's how we arrive at value for something like this, and it's not an exact science, it's not an easy thing to do.
GUEST:
Sure.
APPRAISER:
'Cause you're going to find dramatic swings all over the market. But presidential memorabilia, especially things owned by presidents, is a hot collectible. It always has been and I think it always will be. Especially with certain presidents. JFK is one of the tops when it comes to value and, on items that he owned. It's not a unique item, because there have been several records of JFK briefcases coming to market. Uh, in '98, they did a special sale at a New York auction house with about 600 lots of items relating to JFK. In that sale was a briefcase that was given to JFK by his dad at the beginning of his career. It was a controversial auction. The family claimed a lot of the things were theirs. But that briefcase wound up in the sale, and it sold for $700,000. Now, that's not to say this is anything like that. When you keep doing a little more research and digging, you find other presidential briefcases that have sold. One from FDR was around $17,000. LBJ, around $18,000 and change. So all of this being said, I have to now come up with some sort of value to base it on. Obviously, this was before he was president.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
Uh, if it was a presidential briefcase, I think the value would be higher. But all things put in perspective, based on other auction records, I would probably put an estimate somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
It's a great piece of American history-- the fact that JFK actually held the handle, he had his lunch in here.
GUEST:
Well, thank you very much.
APPRAISER:
No, I'm glad you came.
GUEST:
I, I really appreciate it. I really enjoyed seeing this in person, it's just a great thing.
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