An auction house in Boston is auctioning off nearly 300 items related to the life and times of President John F. Kennedy on Thursday, including a gold wedding ring belonging to Kennedy's killer Lee Harvey Oswald.
The event is being held at RR Auctions and is scheduled to begin Thursday at 12:00 p.m. EST. The auction is being held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination.
"Join [us] in remembering one of our nation's great presidents, fifty years after his tragic assassination in Dallas," the auctioneer said on its website. "[We're] offering an incredible collection of museum-like items related to John F. Kennedy, his celebrated family and the tragedy of November 22, 1963."
Among the highlights of the 287 pieces being auctioned off are Kennedy's personal engraved rosary, a 1963 Lincoln Continental used by Kennedy on his way to Dallas, the "controversial" sixth floor window from the Texas Book Depository, and Lee Harvey Oswald's gold wedding band, which comes accompanies by a five-page letter from Oswald's widow describing the ring's history.
According to CBS News, the ring was left on a dresser on the morning of Kennedy's assassination. It was taken by the secret service as evidence in 1963 and seemed to have disappeared until recently.
Dave Perry, an investigator from Dallas has spent four years studying the Kennedy assassination. Several years ago a Dallas law firm asked him to look through a box of old documents, and inside the box was an envelope containing the ring.
"This was, to me, like finding pieces of eight off a Spanish galleon - if I could prove the provenance," Perry said. A jeweler at RR Auctions provided that proof, noting that inside Oswald's wedding ring is a Soviet star with a hammer and sickle, proving that the ring was made in Russia.
Oswald's widow Marina Oswald, now Marine Porter, said that in Russian tradition it is a very bad omen to take off one's wedding ring.
"I can only believe that the reason he did it is because he figured he was not coming home, one way or another," Porter told reporters.
Porter says that among other reasons, she has put the ring up for sale because she wants to let go of anything in her past reminding her of that fateful November day.
Although online bidding is now closed, the highest absentee bid for the ring was $32,541. Live bidding continues today in Boston at 12:00 p.m.