1954 Marilyn Monroe Military Defense ID Photo
GUEST: So this is my stepdad. He was in the army, and he was stationed in Tokyo, Japan.
APPRAISER: So... not to bury the lede, but next to him we have someone, everyone knows who it is…
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...which is obviously Marilyn Monroe.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: How-how did he get this?
GUEST: So he was not the photographer that took this picture. He just happened to be there at the same time because that was the location they took her to do her ID. When Marilyn Monroe came over to entertain the troops, she had to stop off and do the military official ID process.
APPRAISER: So he got to meet her.
GUEST: Yeah. He thought she was wonderful. Very down to earth, sweet, kind. She asked them a lot of questions about what they do, and he said her beautiful energy just exuded through, and that's what he held onto all those years.
APPRAISER: You mentioned, Tokyo, Japan, which is exactly…
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...we're-we're right there at that moment in 1954, in February.
GUEST: Exactly. Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: When she and Joe DiMaggio were on their honeymoon.
GUEST: Exactly.
APPRAISER: Joe went over to work in some of the training camps…
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...for baseball, and Marilyn went and entertained the troops in Korea.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: But she did get processed first in Japan.
GUEST: She did.
APPRAISER: Just like everybody else, she can't be wandering around army bases without…
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: ...proper identification to be processed. And that's when this photo was taken. They took it for her military defense ID. This is the only one I've ever seen outside of the one that was actually used on her ID.
GUEST: Right. There was only four people, pretty much, in the room. It was the photographer who took that picture, the guy who rolled her fingerprints, himself and his commander, besides Marilyn Monroe.
APPRAISER: Very cool.
GUEST: Basically, yeah.
APPRAISER: So you knew about this photo growing up?
GUEST: My dad talked about it many times growing up.
APPRAISER: But had you ever seen the photograph?
GUEST: I never saw the photograph. He died about 16 years ago. My mom passed last year and my sister had to go in and pretty much clean out their house. My sister said, do you want anything out of the house? And I said, if you ever find that photo, that's the only thing I want out of the house. It was in a place, uh, in one of those metal filing cabinets just mixed in with a bunch of other stuff.
APPRAISER: Well, thank God. (laughs)
GUEST: And she's like, you are not gonna believe what I found!
APPRAISER: She was very proud of the fact that she did this tour. And it was actually one of her, the things, she was kind of a highlight of her short life that she was able to entertain hundreds of thousands of men in four days.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: But anything associated with that…
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...is really always something special. And the fact that this was a copy of the photo that was taken for that ID printed at that time, we know it's vintage. At auction, a pre-sale estimate that I would put on it is about $4,000 to $6,000.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And I would expect it to sell for probably $6,000 or $8,000.
GUEST: Uh-huh, that's crazy.
APPRAISER: That-that's a lot per square inch.
GUEST: Yeah, it is. (chuckles)
APPRAISER: The ID…
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...that Marilyn was issued that shows this photo, now in the photo ID that she was given…
APPRAISER: ...the U.S. Department of Defense ID, she signed it.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And in the photo you can actually see a February 4 below the "Norma Jeane."
GUEST: Right, exactly.
APPRAISER: So it has the date on it. That ID sold in 2008 for $57,000.
GUEST: (chuckling) Wow.
APPRAISER: You got this-- what did your sister get?
GUEST: She got the house. (both laugh) It's special to me, regardless of what it's worth.
$4,000 - $6,000 Auction
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Understanding Our Appraisals
Executive producer Marsha Bemko shares her tips for getting the most out of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.
Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
Note the date: Take note of the date the appraisal was recorded. This information appears in the upper left corner of the page, with the label "Appraised On." Values change over time according to market forces, so the current value of the item could be higher, lower, or the same as when our expert first appraised it.
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