Elvis Presley, a guy who supposedly ate a 22,000-calorie diet of bacon, peanut butter, and banana sandwiches on deep-fried white bread, thankfully also drank H2O from time to time. Now one collector is trying to profit off the King’s hydration, auctioning off a crumpled-up Dixie cup he claims the singer drank out of way back in 1956.
Collector Wade Jones put up the yellowed cup for auction on eBay, along with a letter of authenticity and a “notebook full of ‘research’ that had been collected related to the events surrounding the cup,” like photos of Elvis holding it. On Wednesday, the bid was at $1,200 according to Tulsa World. By Friday, it jumped to more than $1,750—and there’s still a couple of days to go.
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“And the thing’s going to break loose, I’m telling you,” Jones told Tulsa World. “It doesn’t close until Sunday night, and it’s a damn paper cup.”
The eBay listing claims Presley used the cup at a Tulsa cafe the day after he performed at the Tulsa Fairgrounds Pavilion in April 1956. Apparently a fan snatched it up after he left to play a show in Oklahoma City. From there the blue and white Dixie cup passed from fans to collectors, until it wound up in Jones’s hands.
But the 61-year-old cup isn’t the only one in Jones’s possession that supposedly touched the King’s lips. In 2004, Jones made more than $450 when he sold three tablespoons of water from a cup Elvis allegedly used in 1977—which Jones kept in a freezer for eight years, Billboard reports. Jones said he got the cup when he was 13 years old, so it has sentimental value to him.
“I thought it was a little quirkier to sell the water,” Jones told Billboard at the time.
Now that Jones has an ancient paper Dixie cup he’s willing to part with, it looks like he stands to make even more money, seeing as eBay customers will bid on just about anything. Until Sunday, Elvis fanatics can take a break from wondering if he’s in Home Alone and take their chances bidding on a paper cup he might have used instead.
