AN ANTIQUES Roadshow guest was left gasping and weeping, ' I'm going to faint!' as she forced producers to step in and help her.
On a PBS show, collector Vie Carlson chatted with appraiser Simeon Lipman about a special autographed letter from Frank Sinatra she snagged in 1976.
She told the expert: “I always read the Chicago Daily News and my favourite, favourite columnist was Mike Royko.
“Frank Sinatra was in Chicago to perform and of course, all these little ladies on Michigan Avenue were always getting mugged on State Street.
“And Mike Royco about the fact that Frank Sinatra had half of the Chicago police force acting as his bodyguard on this whole floor of a hotel, so he wrote a kind of a cute, funny column.”
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But the famous My Way singer responded to the journalist with a harsh letter, as Vie said: "Old ‘Blue eyes’ didn’t appreciate the column and fired off this letter to Mike Royco.”
In the middle, there was a glass frame with two pages of Sinatra's signed letter and a copy of the publication it appeared in.
The guest added: "Mike published it in the Daily News and said that he would sell that letter to the highest bidder and the money would go to the Salvation Army.
“I had a $400 Mother’s Day check from my big family … and I said ‘I’ll bid $400 and a couple of weeks later the phone rang, I picked it up - ‘This is Mike Royco’ I just let out a holler.”
Taking a closer look at the item, the expert told the guest: “I conferred with some of my colleagues and we all agree that it is the best Sinatra letter we ever read.
“It’s still a famous letter, people remember it today and as such I would estimate it at auction at, at least $15,000.
The expert continued: "I wouldn’t be surprised if this letter sold for more than that, because Sinatra stuff is as hot as it can get and it just doesn't get any better than this.”
The guest was floored after hearing the jaw-dropping valuation of the letter, and began to weep in her hands.
“Oh gee, I’m going to faint," she said.
She uttered the words, "I'm going to faint," again before a producer quickly provided her with a seat, to which she stumbled in utter shock.
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“Did you all hear that?," she asked the onlookers.
