Oswald's wedding ring fetches $118G at auction

[Hum]

DALLAS ?  Lee Harvey Oswald's gold wedding band has sold at auction for $118,000.

RR Auction said the ring sold to a Texas buyer who wishes to remain anonymous. The ring was among nearly 300 items linked to the former president that went up for auction Thursday in Boston.

On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, Oswald left the wedding ring in a cup on the dresser and left $170 in one of its drawers before he headed for work at the Texas School Book Depository.

Bobby Livingston, an executive vice president with the New Hampshire-based auction house, RR Auction, described the ring, which has a tiny hammer and sickle engraved on the inside of the band, as a "very powerful, significant piece of evidence."

"It gives you such insight into the mind of Lee Harvey Oswald," said Livingston, who predicted that the ring would bring $100,000 or more.

It was relatively recently that the seller, Oswald's widow, Marina Oswald Porter, recovered the ring, which apparently sat forgotten for decades in the files of a Fort Worth lawyer who once did work for her.

Accompanying the ring is a five-page handwritten letter dated May 5, 2013, in which Porter writes: "At this time of my life I don't wish to have Lee's ring in my possession because symbolically I want to let go of my past that is connecting with Nov. 22, 1963."

At her request, the auction house is not releasing the full contents of the letter, in which Porter documents the history of the ring, from its purchase in the Soviet city of Minsk, Belarus, before their April, 30, 1961, wedding, to how it was left on the dresser at her friend Ruth Paine's home, where she and their children were living when Kennedy was killed. Oswald, who lived during the week in a rooming house near downtown Dallas, usually only visited on the weekend.

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[Growled Member]

A significant piece of history there. I wouldn't want to own it, though.

[Hum]

I wonder if anyone was asked if they saw Oswald wearing his wedding band that day ...