If you’re a thrift store shopper, you know that you never know what you’re going to come across. While most of the stuff is just what you’d think it is – useful second-hand items – sometimes a treasure is hiding in plain sight on the shelves. And now locals in Kansas City, Missouri have come across a treasure. It is a fiddle that appears to have belonged to one of country music’s biggest stars. And instead of being at the Country Music Hall of Fame or in a museum, it is housed right in the Kansas City Goodwill warehouse.
After an in-depth investigation, Fox 4 learned how country legend Roy Acuff’s famous fiddle wound up in the junk pile at the Goodwill. And after its authenticity was verified, people started placing bids on the fiddle. This find has left Goodwill employees stunned because they didn’t even know how it had gotten into their possession.
Every year, Goodwill of Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas receives 15 million pounds of donations from Good Samaritans, reported Fox4KC. But rarely within that pile of junk do they get something that once belonged to the real “King of Country Music.”
Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys were playing the Grand Old Opry all the way back in 1938. And he always had his fiddle. Besides being a music sensation all his career, he was the first living member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and even got a museum dedicated to him in Union County, Tennessee.
“His personality would have got him to the moon if that’s where he wanted to go,” Martha Carter, the treasurer of the Union City Historical Society, told Fox.
After the Goodwill store on North Oak received the donated fiddle with Acuff’s name on it, they “shut the shop down,” Gary Raines, the manager of Goodwill’s e-commerce program said.
“We were looking things up, playing the music. People were talking about it,” Raines said. “It was just very exciting. Like everybody else, we are going, ‘What? We can’t believe this!’”
The fiddle had a sticker that claimed it was handcrafted in 1945 by Acuff’s Uncle Evart. It also came with a letter that detailed its history and how Acuff himself bought it for $125.
“It was made from an apple tree wood grown on the Neidman farm, which was Evart’s sister and brother-in-law,” the letter read.
As news of the fiddle started to spread, people started placing bids for it.
Bidding started at $5 but by Wednesday night, it had risen to $7,779.77.
The only reason the fiddle isn’t selling for more is that it is in bad shape.
Raines said, “This is not in great shape, but part of it’s the story and the history.”
Although they’re profiting from the fiddle, Goodwill has no idea who gave up the valuable piece of country music history.
Raines said, “This is a piece of history, of Americana. From ‘Great Speckled Bird’ to ‘Tennessee Waltz’ to ‘Wabash Cannonball,’ all that was played n this instrument.”
Would you like to own this piece of history?
