Chicago, Oct 13 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The legendary Elvis Presley has been dead for ages, but still he is very much alive in through his music and memorabilia. Now a fist-full of his hair is up for grabs by eager fans on the auction block this Sunday at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago.

Elvis Presley’s to be auctioned hair, is the same hair that Presley may have lost to an Army barber when he went into the service back in 1958.

All these memorabilia items like clothes he wore, scarves he threw to screaming fans, who judging by the yellow sweat stains, never washed them and Christmas cards he sent etc. belong to Gary Pepper. Pepper was not only a huge Presley fan and president of an Elvis Presley fan club, but a close friend too, as many of the photographs of the two together suggest.

Unfortunately Pepper, who had cerebral palsy, died in 1980, three years after Presley, and bequeathed his collection to his nurse, and she is putting the items up for auction, said Mary Williams, of the auction house.

She said Pepper died without telling anyone exactly where the hair came from or when it was cut, but she said it appears that it was clipped during Presley’s stint in the Army or around that time.

“In 1958, the nation’s newspapers announced that Elvis Presley, having been newly recruited into the U.S. Army, had received two haircuts trimming his famous locks and sideburns down to a greatly modified crew cut,” said a statement by the auction house.

“Individual strands of Elvis Presley’s shaved locks have since been treasured by his fans who wish to own a piece of The King himself.”

The auction house didn’t have a DNA test carried out on the hair but quoted “an expert in celebrity hair authentication,” John Reznikoff, saying it matched the Elvis hair he has in his collection. “I have a high resolution scan and I took mine (Presley hair sample) out and the coarseness and color of it, they all match,” he said.

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