A Case of the Krupa

This week's feature is an estate find with a story. A couple of years ago my  wife, Laurie, and I went to an estate sale in north Dallas. We got a few good items there (including a never used, in the box airbrush) but the item I'm featuring today almost didn't get purchased.

I was looking through some old albums just to see what they had. Most of it was pretty generic 1960's snd 1970's pop music stuff. However, I did spot one album that was a bit older. It was this:

As you can see, the cover wasn't in the best shape. The album wasn't much better. Still, since it was the last day of the sale, it had been marked down to 75 cents. For some reason I just thought it needed a home, so after putting it back and picking it up about three times, I went ahead and bought it.

On the way home I was talking about how I wished that it were in better shape. I commented that someone had even written their name on it! That caused me to look a little closer at it. I saw this:

Yep, it says, "Dave, I hope you enjoy this. Gene Krupa"

I had just accidently bought a signed Gene Krupa album! A while later I took it to Heritage Auctions to get appraised. The expert said that the signature is genuine, and although the album is pretty worthless due to condition, the autograph is worth about 110 bucks! Not bad for three quarters!

Also, the album, while not in good shape, is playable....and pretty good! There's nothing like a little Krupa to put you in a Mad Men frame of mind!

So until next time, keep searching for treasure!