RICH: Hi, Lily. COREY: Hey.
LILY: Hey. COREY: How's it going?
RICH: Good.
You guys know each other?
LILY: That's my stepdad.
[music playing]
Yeah, this is kind of awkward.
[laughter]
Didn't know you were coming.
RICH: Did you clean your room?
I did.
COREY: So what do we got?
RICH: OK, it's a letter that was in a plane crash outside of Las
Vegas in 1958, along with a letter from the Postal Service
to the person it was addressed to saying
it was in a plane crash.
COREY: Didn't the post office used to be nice?
I don't think they would do this for you today, honestly.
I don't think they would even bother recovering.
[laughs]
RICH: As a little boy, I remember my parents
telling me about this plane crash that
happened before I was alive.
I don't even know how my folks got it.
Don't have any set number in my mind.
I was thinking probably $400.
But I really just came to spy on Lily.
"The enclosed mail was recovered in an airplane
crash near Las Vegas, Nevada.
We regret any inconvenience resulting
in the delay in delivery."
Now, I know the crash was a really big deal.
I mean, almost 50 years later, they
taught us about it in school.
RICH: Right.
COREY: It was a weird story.
I mean, it was the worst plane crash
Southern Nevada has ever had.
Some kind of military exercise was going on,
and a military plane hit a commercial airliner.
RICH: That's what I understand.
COREY: And it was pretty hairy.
I didn't know they were carrying mail on it, though.
RICH: Well, they were carrying mail from Honolulu.
COREY: All right.
You can definitely tell it's from around the time period,
because what's it missing?
How do you know it's old?
[interposing voices]
LILY: --the singe marks?
The--
COREY: Didn't have a zip code.
Oh.
[chuckles]
I knew that.
--from the post office, yeah.
COREY: Lily's pretty quick on her feet,
and she's learned a bunch of stuff here.
But I'm not trying to make her look
bad in front of her stepdad.
So obviously, it's old.
You never opened it up and tried to read it?
No.
COREY: I guess with all the burnt stuff,
it'd be a little hairy.
LILY: Watch.
It's, like, some breakup letter from, like,
some guy in the military.
[chuckling]
[interposing voices]
RICH: --positive thinking, Lily.
LILY: Well, I mean, you know, I don't know what it is.
COREY: Yeah, who knows what it could be?
Any idea of what you want for it?
I'd like to get $400 for it.
[music playing]
COREY: Doesn't sound out of the range
of what it could be worth.
RICH: And I'll throw Lily in.
LILY: Hey.
[laughter]
COREY: Deal.
What?
[laughter]
COREY: Now I'm profiting off you.
Oh, great.
I'm glad I could be part of the sale, guys.
COREY: I figure it's got to be collectible.
The way I look at it-- you know, postmen, firemen, policemen--
they're all people that are really
passionate about their jobs, and they all collect stuff.
But I don't know how desirable it is.
And I'd like to know how many more of these are out there.
And to be honest with you, the last time I bought a burnt-up
piece of paper I thought was almost useless, it ended
up being worth $10 grand, so--
Wow.
COREY: --I'd like to hear a little bit more about it
before I give you an offer. - Sure.
Me, too.
To be honest, I'd like to know a little bit more, too.
COREY: Do you want to go give Mark Hall-Patton a call and--
Yeah.
--see if he can answer a few questions about it and maybe
let us know a little bit more?
Yeah, sure.
I can do that. - All right.
Give him a call. - All right.
I will.
All right, thanks.
See you soon.
It's a pretty morbid item, but it's
a great piece of local history.
And I think a lot of people would be interested in it.
[cash register ring]
MARK HALL-PATTON: Let me take a look at this.
What's curious about this is, most of the stuff that
was recovered from this crash had
a separate marking on the envelope that said,
damaged in the Postal Service.
But in this case, they had this little extra piece
that came with it.
And they would do that.
They would apologize.
You know, we're sorry that your mail
got burned up in an airplane crash or whatever.
In 1958, when this happened, we had
never had a crash of that size.
It was a United flight.
They were going from LA to Denver.
And they were flying at about-- it was about 21,000 feet.
And they had an F-100 that had come out of Nellis.
It was flying at 28,000 feet, well above.
There was a particular maneuver they wanted the F-100 to do,
which was to descend down to 6,000 feet and do it quickly.
The F-100 came down, clipped the wing of the DC-7.
And it was a horrendous crash.
But one of the interesting things
is, they had a group of scientists
that were flying with briefcases handcuffed
to their arms in that.
13 of them on the plane.
And these guys were doing some secret military stuff.
They all died.
And after that, the army never allowed that number
of scientists to fly together.
This particular plane crash ended
up making a lot of changes in commercial
and military aviation.
It's an awful thing to have this kind of a loss of life in order
for those improvements to happen,
but at least something positive came out of it.
LILY: So do you think there's a real market for this?
Like, do you think anybody would actually collect it, or--
MARK HALL-PATTON: Oh, yes.
If you're into collecting postal history,
there's actually a catalog for just this,
for interrupted mail covers.
And there are some very advanced collectors that try,
you know, to get something from every plane crash.
COREY: Oh, wow.
Well, Mark, I appreciate it, my man.
Thank you very much.
Not a problem.
Good to see you. - Thank you.
Nice to see you, too. RICH: Nice meeting you.
- Good to meet you. - Nice meeting--
- Yeah. - --you, too.
Have fun, now.
RICH: What do you think?
I don't know.
Lily, what do you think?
Never done this before, so I have no clue.
[laughter]
Yeah, I think there'd be a conflict of interest
between you two, anyway--
LILY: Yeah, obviously.
COREY: I mean, I'd never really sold burnt mail before.
I'll give you $100 for it.
It's cool enough.
It's got that weird factor people are into.
It's a little low, don't you think?
I mean, he said it was collectible.
Could you do $175?
[sighs] There is a market out there for it, I'm sure.
But I don't know how unique this is going to be.
I'll go $125.
Well, it does me no good, so I'll take the $125.
But you got to throw her back in now.
COREY: All right, she's off in 10 minutes, anyways.
Thank you.
COREY: But she's going to write you up over there.
RICH: Terrific.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. $125
for a burnt piece of envelope?
Yeah, I'm pretty pleased.
It's all going to go to Lily, anyway.
She'll take it when we get home.