Al Capone's personal possessions up for auction

[oregano]

A Century of Notoriety: The Estate of Al Capone (Live) - Lots | Witherell's Auction House

Note you can view up to 90 items by clicking on a drop down box on the lower right.

Sonny Capone, Al's only child, lived in Auburn, California, an old mining town that has become a Sacramento exurb, for decades. He has apparently died and his heirs have decided to auction off items belonging to his infamous father as well as some items of his own.

The auction contains many family photos, including one billed as the last known photo of Al Capone. Also up for auction is dinnerware belonging to Al and his wife Mae, a handful of jewels and bejeweled items belonging to Al such as pins, a money clip, a pocketwatch, a matchbook holder, and a pocketknife, many of them (especially the last four I mentioned) having "AC" or "AL" spelled out in diamonds.

There is also Al's bedroom furniture, which is a really nicely preserved example of a high end 1920s bedroom set. (Most of the 1920s furniture I come across has been completely trashed.) The bedroom set is being sold by piece, which may bring more money but personally I think it should have been kept as a set.

An interesting fact about the Capones that I did not know: Mae apparently collected Dresden figurines. Sonny kept maybe a dozen he liked. Also, several guns, including two pistols belonging to Al, including one identified as Al's favorite gun.

If I had the money, I'd definitely try to get the entire bedroom set, which as I said is a really nice Roaring 20s complete bedroom set, and 20s bedroom sets that are this high end and this well preserved rarely surface, no matter their original owners.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

My daughter and I were looking at this. It's very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

Imagine this: You bought one of his dressers, and got it home, and put it down with a loud thud. Suddenly you hear a click, and on the back, a small panel is sitting half open, full of cash.

 

[oregano]

Actually, I have long thought of how to hide valuables in similar fashion in and under furniture. I actually did so with a small student desk I owned in my college years-the bottom drawer could be removed, revealing an empty space underneath that I used to store what few things a 21 year old would consider valuable, like a class ring and my high school diploma. I have talked with people on online forums who use similar methods to hide gold and cash.

Most furniture in the 1920s was "highboy", meaning that it stood on four long legs that created a large, visible open space underneath, thus making it useless for hiding stuff. Al's furniture is "lowboy", closer to the floor. It is certainly possible that Al had secret compartments put in. People who find old stashes of cash are usually declared the owner by the courts. Any 1920s cash hiding in that furniture would likely have far more value to numismatists as antiques than any face value, even before you get into the "Al Capone's Secret Stash!" angle.

You are likely old enough to remember the "Al Capone's Vault" fiasco, which for the younguns was a 1986 TV special, hosted by the infamous Geraldo Rivera, that declared that Al had hidden a treasure underneath a Chicago building in his gang's territory. The two hours leading up to the big reveal was actually quite interesting, showing the former locations of underground passages and speakeasies in Al's domain. Then Geraldo blew the wall down with a 1920s plunger to reveal...a wall of dirt with a few old bottles and a street sign embedded in it. It didn't hurt his career much, but it did make him a laughingstock for a while.

The furniture is gorgeous, Capone or no Capone, and would go great in one of the old houses in Midtown. I hope one person buys it all up and makes it into the ultimate retro bedroom.

 

[Gerontius]

I hid $200 in cash in a 1976 rotary phone once. I also would take the drawers out of the desk & secret away an Altoids tin full of cash in there.

One of the best hidey holes I found was the inside of my record player. I had a tall victrola in my bedroom and if I backed the screws out that held the motor board in there, that let it swing up on a hinge. So what I did was pull out the crank & turntable, swing the tonearm out of the way, and open it up--plenty of room to hide anything.

Inside of old windup clocks worked well too--or in the hollow base of a desk fan--or taped to the blades of a fan left running. You can also take an album of old 78 records & stuff things down inside the envelopes where the records go. Putting things inside the fridge is good, and same goes with an old-time box camera: nobody's going to open that up and ruin the film.

I also hid things inside my typewriter, rolled up notes & stashed them behind light switch plates, all kinds of stuff. None of this was contraband but I liked to hide things just as a little secret spot all to myself. It was a lot of fun.

 

[oregano]

I have a little replica of a 1934 Philco floor radio that I bought for $5 at a flea market. Apparently it had something to do with a contest being run by a newspaper in Colorado Springs, Colorado. But, the real interesting part is that much of the back label has been cut around the edges, then sealed with scotch tape. Obviously, somebody had used the little scale radio replica to hide valuables, probably cash, for a while. It does not make noise when shaken, so I doubt anything is inside, and the current scotch tape holding the back on has not yellowed so the back has not been sealed in place for a long time.

I've been reading Al's Wikipedia entry, and it says that Sonny died in 2004. I don't know why it has taken 18 years for this sale to happen, unless it has to do with possible probate litigation. Litigation around wills, especially if the deceased is very wealthy and/or famous, can go on for decades in the US, to the point that the fortune ends up in the hands of the respective lawyers and the heirs wind up with $0. Possibly the sale has been ordered by a probate judge, or was agreed to in a settlement. The sale of the photos struck me as odd, since photos tend to be held on to by heirs. That points to some sort of legal order or settlement forcing the sale.

I too loved the idea of hiding stuff, especially as a kid, but the cheaply built 1960s suburban tract house I grew up in was not conducive to it. I would do stuff like making crevices in the junk in my closet and hide yet more junk in them.

 

[Gerontius]

I have a little replica of a 1934 Philco floor radio that I bought for $5 at a flea market.

Not that it's related to Al Capone but could you throw some pictures of it? I thought most Philco replicas were the little cathedral radios that sit on the table. Wouldn't mind seeing it if you had a picture.

 

[oregano]

@Gerontius: I will try to get a pic or two today if possible.

I heard a sound bite from Diane Capone, Sonny's oldest child, on the radio this morning and apparently the reason she's selling is simple: she is in her 70s and in poor health, and nobody inside or outside of the family that she asked wanted this stuff, and she was worried that the unique stories behind each piece would be lost. She wanted the few relics of her grandpa's life to be owned and preserved by 1920s aficionados. The handwritten letter from Al to Sonny mailed from Alcatraz will get a LOT of interest from rare document collectors, who tend to be very wealthy and who love to find previously unknown documents like letters written by famous and/or historically significant figures. By the mid 1930s Al had deteriorated so badly from the neurological effects of untreated syphilis that there are few personal documents of his life from then until his 1947 death.