A woman nearly fainted when she learned the value of a very special letter she brought to “Antiques Roadshow.”
The collector, Vie Carlson, brought a typed letter signed by Frank Sinatra, which the singer wrote to a newspaper columnist at the Chicago Daily News in 1976.
Sinatra was angry with the journalist for questioning the amount of police protection he used, and his irate letter was full of colorful language and insults, including, “Quite frankly, I don’t understand why people don’t spit in your eye three or four times a day.”
Carlson was stunned when “Antiques Roadshow” appraiser Simeon Lipman said the letter would sell for at least $15,000 at auction.
“Oh gee, I’m gonna faint. I’m gonna faint,” she said, as Lipman and a producer helped her take a seat.
“Oh man, are they kidding me?” she said, and shouted gleefully to everyone around her, “Did you all hear that, did you all hear that?”
She then pointed to someone off camera and said with a laugh, “He offered me a hundred dollars for it! You can’t have it for a hundred dollars!”
In another sweet moment, she told the producer, “If I ever sell it, the money goes to Salvation Army. The more the merrier!”
The heartwarming moment was from a 2009 episode of “Antiques Roadshow” filmed in Madison, Wisconsin, and was featured in a new collection of music-related appraisals from the show’s history.
According to a note at the end of the segment, the letter would be worth $20,000 today.
According to the Rockford Register Star, Carlson owned an antique shop, Vie’s Antiques, in Loves Park, Illinois. She passed away at 87 in 2012.
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