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Last week, I had to drive to Laurens South Carolina to attend a court hearing about my late mother's estate. On the way back, I stopped to see an old friend whom I had not seen since 1986. He used to live in Howard Beach, Queens, New York, but now he lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
This was a very special old friend who has done me many important and life-changing favors in the past. I first met him in 1968, when I was a new over-the-counter securities trader in Wall Street. I worked for Hayden Stone and he worked for Eastman Dillon Union Securities. I did not know him at all and out of the blue he called me and invited me for a drink at the Ivanhoe Bar on Exchange Place. That bar turned out to be the drinking place for Wall Street Securities Traders. One of the regulars I met there was Sandy Weill, who later became Chairman of Citibank.
Several years later, my friend's firm was taken over by F.I. DuPont Glore Forgan, which was later bought by H. Ross Perot. So, my friend worked for Ross Perot. The firm went broke and out of business, so my friend became a taxi driver, which he still is.
Almost every important event in my life seemed to involve my friend in some way. In 1980, when I went to Pakistan and got married to Honzagool and brought my new wife and her nefarious cousin Aziz to America, I called him frantically from JFK Airport saying that I desperately needed a place for us to stay. I somehow felt that my regular wife Anda would not appreciate this. So, Honzagool, Aziz and I stayed at his house in Howard Beach right next to JFK Airport for the next two months.
Two years later, when I took my baby daughter Shamema to Virginia, the Pakistanis who were trying to get the child surrounded my friend's house thinking that the baby was inside. These were very dangerous people (they later became affiliated with the Taliban) and my friend gives this incident as a reason for his decision to move to North Carolina. Later, I allowed him to know the hide-out where I was keeping my baby daughter in Virginia. When my father had a seizure and then was married on the same day on December 31, 1985, my friend drove me to the hospital in Virginia and became one of the last people besides myself to speak to my father before he died 19 days later.
So, when I stopped at his house last Wednesday and we started reminiscing about these past events, I told him that I was selling stuff on Ebay. I was surprised when he said that he had a bunch of old publicity photos in the garage. He promptly decided to let me have them. We had to dig into piles of junk in his garage. These publicity photos had been placed under stacks and heaps of junk. They were covered with dirt and dust and had obviously been sitting in that garage for at least 20 years.
Included in them were a bunch of Elvis photos. These are obviously the most valuable. So, I scanned a few of them and have put them up for sale on Ebay. You can view them at: http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=samsloan
A few words of caution: There are nearly one thousand photos in this collection. With just a few exceptions, no two are alike. I only have one of each. If you see something you want, you had better bid for it now. You will probably not get a second chance. I have not seen any of these lobby cards for sale anywhere else.
So far, all of the Elvis ones I have offered have received bids. I have not been getting bids on the non-Elvis cards. So, if you want one without Elvis on it, you have a good chance.
I have scanned more of these from the movies Speedway, Roustabout and Tickle Me which I have not posted yet. Most of the cards I have are for movies and actors I have never heard of. I just posted some of the Elvis cards first because I assume that they will be the most popular.
These are all originals. By originals I mean that they were distributed to the movie theatres when the movies came out.
Since I have about one thousand of these (all kinds of movies but I have put up the Elvis ones first) there must be a name for these. All of them are 8x10.
I do have a bunch of original Elvis full-sized very large posters. They are printed on the lowest quality paper. Images are not good. They are all folded up. They have been sitting in a dusty box for the last 30 years. If they did not have Elvis on them, they would be worthless.
They are too big for my scanner. I will have to buy a digital camera or else take a picture with my regular camera and then scan the picture.
Sam Sloan