License plates from JFK’s limo auctioned for $100,000

Jason Whitely | WFAA-TV, Dallas-Fort Worth

DALLAS — The license plates affixed to President John F. Kennedy’s limousine on the day he was assassinated in Dealey Plaza nearly 52 years ago sold at auction in Dallas for $100,000 on Saturday.

Heritage Auctions on Maple Avenue auctioned the plates with other JFK and memorabilia.

The starting bid for the plates was $40,000. The price rose to $75,000 on Internet bidding before live bidding began. The buyer — who was present for the auction — was said by Heritage to be an ardent Kennedy collector who wishes to remain anonymous.

It is not clear whether the artifacts will remain in Dallas.

"These are the plates that were on Kennedy's limousine," said Heritage consignment director Don Ackerman. "Sometimes you can't know 100% for sure; in this case, we do know 100% for sure."

The plates’ owner, Jane Walker, 72, decided to sell them after keeping them in her kitchen junk drawer for years. Walker’s father, Willard Hess, owned the Cincinnati company that refurbished the limo after the assassination.

"My sons always wanted me to put them in a safe deposit box," Walker said earlier this week. "I figure if anyone ever came in and saw them, they wouldn't know what they were."

The yellow District of Columbia plates with “GG-300” in black lettering are in excellent condition, considering they are more than a half-century old.

No one outside Walker’s close friends and family knew they existed.

"Anytime anybody saw them, it made their heart flutter," Walker said in a telephone interview from her Cincinnati home.

JFK license plates from fatal limo ride will be auctioned off The long-lost license plates from the limousine used by President John F. Kennedy when he was shot, will be going up for auction in Dallas. Bidding will start at $40,000. The license plates were almost relegated to the garbage bin.

After the assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, the presidential limo was returned to Hess & Eisenhardt in Ohio — where the car had originally been turned into a presidential vehicle — so it could be refurbished, painted, and bullet-proofed.

"I remember when the car was flown back; it still had some blood in the back of the car," said Walker, who was 20 at the time and a college student. "I was in on every aspect of the reconditioning and rebuilding the car. It was really sort of part of my life at that time."

But the license plates — stamped to expire on March 31, 1964 — were almost an afterthought.

"These plates were about to expire, so the FBI agent (overseeing the work) took the plates, installed them on the new car, and threw out the old plates, and Mr. Hess got them out of the garbage," Ackerman explained. "He wanted to keep them as a souvenir for his files. He asked the agent, 'Is it all right if I take these?' The agent said, 'What do you want them for?' He said, 'I'd like to have them for my files.' The guy said, 'Fine. Go ahead and take them.'"

For years, Hess kept the plates between some books on the top shelf in his study. Before he died in 2000, he gave them to his daughter.