The Collectors: Couple Covet It All
Larry and Judy Moss were having dinner at Disney World during their honeymoon in 1973 when heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier and his family walked into the restaurant.
The Mosses wanted an autograph, but couldn’t find a piece of paper. “The tablecloths were plastic, the napkins were cloth,” says Judy. At the last minute, Larry pulled a dollar bill from his pocket and got a waiter to ask Frazier to sign it.
Frazier joked at first, pocketing the bill and nodding across the room as if to say, “Thanks,” says Larry. The boxer then smiled, retrieved the bill from his pocket, signed it and set the Mosses on a 36-year odyssey, turning that first autograph into a keepsake, then part of a scrapbook, then part of a lifetime of collecting.
“Some people say, ‘I collect stamps’ or ‘I collect coins’ or ‘I collect baseball cards.’ My sentence stops with ‘I collect,’” says Larry, 57, whose vast array of collectibles ranges from history to pop culture. It includes original signatures of eight signers of The Declaration of Independence and Mother Teresa’s declaration on a dollar bill: “God bless you, M Teresa.”
When Graceland opened a new exhibit last month on Elvis Presley’s Hollywood years, it
included six major pieces on loan from the Moss collection. A piece of Elvis clothing — any piece — is considered a coup among memorabilia collectors. Moss loaned Graceland a white suit worn by Elvis in the movie “Clambake,” a blue jean jacket from the opening scene in “Jailhouse Rock,” a doctor’s smock worn by his character in “Change of Habit” and a black suit he wore in “Viva Las Vegas.” The loan also included a bass guitar he played in “Jailhouse Rock” and a movie poster from “Love Me Tender.”
“Only a handful of collectors outside Graceland have a collection like Larry’s,” says Graceland archives manager Angie Marchese, the woman in charge of the world’s preeminent Elvis collection. Graceland’s collection of movie costumes is limited because Elvis’ costumes were owned by the movie studios and the costumes usually remained with the studios when filming ended, says Marchese.
The Mosses, owners of Interstate Blood Bank and Dinstuhl’s Fine Candies, acquired many of their collectibles at auction, but many were acquired by being in the right place at the right time. “The chase is the best part,” says Larry, who has a knack for finding why-didn’t-I-think-of-that items. One of his most unusual is a real voting machine from Broward County, Fla., with bags full of hanging chads from the famously contested 2000 presidential election decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
When the movie “The Firm” was filmed in Memphis, the Mosses ended up with a plaque from the film’s mob-run law firm “Bendini, Lambert & Locke.” They bought it at auction along with the ornate iron bed shared in the movie by co-stars Tom Cruise and Jeanne Tripplehorn.
One trip can become a gold mine. In 1973, shortly after their encounter with Joe Frazier, the couple went to an Elvis concert in Las Vegas. “Security was nothing like it is today,” says Larry, who decided dollar bills seemed to help when asking for autographs. At a single Elvis concert, he got autographs from Ann-Margret, Raquel Welch, Telly Savalas, Hugh Hefner and Buzz Aldrin. “If you hand someone a dollar bill, it seems to get their attention more than if you just hand them a piece of paper,” he says.
The Mosses estimate they have about 7,000 autographed bills. One, acquired at auction, is a ruble note with the signatures of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin from the Yalta Conference in 1945.
The autograph collection is as diverse in itself as the collection as a whole. Other signers include all four of The Beatles; a barber (August Weikman) rescued from the Titanic in 1912; actors James Dean, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell; Muppet creator Jim Henson; singer Eddie Cantor; and the 12 astronauts who walked on the moon.
If there is a theme to the collection, Larry says it would be the heavy emphasis on autographs and on Memphis, especially when it comes to music. He has several Stax Records items, including a Johnnie Taylor costume. There’s a platinum record award for the 1976 Rick Dees hit “Disco Duck” and original 78 rpm vinyl recordings of Elvis’ first five Sun Records songs.
As connoisseurs of history and pop culture, the Mosses also are tuned in to the potential value of pieces in the collection, most of it in storage. Anything once owned, worn by or signed by Elvis, Marilyn Monroe or The Beatles will be the most valuable, they say. “No one else is in the same realm as them,” says Larry. The Beatles surpass all other bands because, “They are so good, and people still like them,” says Judy.
To pick a single item with the most appeal to a true collector, Larry says that in spite of one of only three “American Eagle” Elvis capes in the collection (the other two are at Graceland) it would probably be the Gibson guitar that Scotty Moore played on Presley’s first four Sun Records songs, including the seminal rock song “That’s All Right.”
Marchese says some collectors might argue that an Elvis “Starburst” jumpsuit with cape, also in the Moss collection, would be near the top of the list, along with the items Moss loaned to Graceland. “But that guitar really is rock and roll history.”
Like a true collector, Larry doesn’t hesitate when asked if there’s anything he wants to acquire: “Yes, anything I don’t have I’d love to have.”
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