(AP) Dallas – The president and chief executive of Kentucky Fried Chicken
Japan purchased the trademark white suit worn by company founder "Colonel"
Harland Sanders at auction Saturday for $21,510 — then promptly tried it on.

Masao "Charlie" Watanabe grinned while putting on the suit jacket and black
string tie at the Heritage Auctions event, standing beneath a photograph of
Sanders. He had already planned to attend a company marketing meeting in
Dallas, but arrived early after he found out about the auction, he said.

Watanabe was one of hundreds of in-person, telephone and online bidders
vying for various items, including a gun belt owned by legendary outlaw Jesse
James and leg irons that restrained abolitionist John Brown.

Watanabe also bought a mini-collection of Sanders’ memorabilia — including
his 1973 Kentucky driver’s license — for $1,912.

Sanders is a popular figure in Japan, and most KFC restaurants there have
statues of him in front, Watanabe said. He plans to display the suit at a
restaurant in Tokyo.

A KFC restaurant in Japan

FoxNews – A seven-page letter signed by George Washington, urging a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress to help ratify the Constitution, fetched just
under $1.5 million at an auction Friday.

Washington wrote the letter to John Armstrong, a major general in Washington’s
army, in 1788. In it, Washington voiced his passionate support of the newly-drafted  
Constitution.

“I have no doubt those persons who are chosen to administer it will have wisdom
enough to discern the influence which their examples as rulers and legislators may
have on the body of the people, and will have virtue enough to pursue that line
of conduct which will most conduce to the happiness of their Country,” the letter
reads.

It was not immediately known who the winning bidder was at Christie’s. He or she
placed the bid of $1,443,750 over the phone, beating out a competing bidder in
the auction room.

The Wall Street Journal reports the English auction house Bonhams will offer a
1965 Ferrari 330GT 2+2 that once belonged to the late Beatles singer and
songwriter John Lennon at its auction at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in
Chichester, England, on July 12.

According to the sales catalog, the Ferrari was the first car Lennon bought after
passing his driving test in February, 1965. As the story goes, news that Lennon
had passed the especially demanding English motor-vehicle test made headlines.

SCHAUMBERG, Ill. (AP) – A rare century-old U.S. nickel that was once mistakenly declared a fake has sold at auction for more than $3.1 million.

The 1913 Liberty Head nickel is one of only five known to exist. But it’s the coin’s
back story that adds to its cachet: It was surreptitiously and illegally cast, discovered
in a car wreck that killed its owner, declared a fake, forgotten in a closet for
decades then declared the real deal.

It was offered for sale by four Virginia siblings at a rare coin and currency auction in
the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg on Thursday, and sold for well over the expected 
$2.5 million.

The winning bidders were two men from Lexington, Ky., and Panama City, Fla., who 
bought the coin in partnership.

The Beach Boys today

LONDON (AP) — A cache of apparently forgotten material dubbed "the
lost archive" of the Beach Boys, one of America’s greatest and most
commercially successful bands, is being put up for auction.

The collection of thousands of documents included what seems to be
the band’s first royalty check, for $990, dozens of signed contracts,
and handwritten and copied scores to "Good Vibrations", "California
Girls" and many other hits from their heyday in the 1960s.

A group of investors is seeking to sell the entire collection as one unit
with the expectation that it will bring several million dollars.

"We thought it would be a crime to break it up," says Ted Owen, who
heads the Fame Bureau, the London-based firm handling the sealed-
bid auction which ends on May 15.