ELVIS MUSEUM: Where’s the jumpsuit?

  The new Elvis museum at the Imperial Palace, The King’s Ransom, officially debuted Tuesday with some cool items. The shagadelic red velvet bedspread and the “Spinout” movie jacket were my personal favorites.
  Perhaps because Graceland bought back so much stuff over the years, the museum seems a little thin overall; padded with artifacts from other stars whose career paths crossed with Elvis (and whose didn’t?).
  And there is one very conspicuous thing it doesn’t have: a jumpsuit.
  You know, the bell-bottom sequin thing that’s become synonymous with Vegas Elvis? And, by photo-op association with Mayor Oscar Goodman and the Convention and Visitors Authority, a de facto symbol of the city itself? Right up there with the showgirl as an icon?
  What gives?
  There’s only one person to ask. And that person the museum does have. He’s Jimmy Velvet, who abandoned his rock ’n' roll dreams years ago for the more lucrative career of running Elvis museums. The owners of this one lured him out of retirement for at least six months and bestowed upon him the title of curator.
  “I wish they had bought one when they had the chance. They’re still trying to find one for sale even,” Velvet says of the elusive jumpsuit. “Eventually one will pop up.”
  Velvet opened his first Elvis museum across the street from Graceland in 1978. “We were charging a dollar a head and couldn’t get but eight people in at a time,” he says. His empire eventually expanded to museums in four cities. When he sensed the items were approaching their peak value and his own family didn’t seem interested in carrying on the museum business, he sold most of them in Las Vegas auctions at the Hard Rock and Hilton hotels.
  Not long after Elvis Presley died in 1977, his father, Vernon, drove Velvet over to a dry cleaners in Memphis. There hung 72 jumpsuits on a rack. Vernon was hoping to get $500 apiece for them, or $25,000 for all of them.
  “I said to him, ‘One day the jumpsuits are going to be the most valuable things there. You don’t want to do that. Sell off all the other stuff.’ ’’
  Velvet eventually came to own 11 jumpsuits. The first auction brought a sense of deja vu. The auction company wanted to price the jumpsuits at $8,000 to $10,000. Velvet argued for $50,000 and they sold for more than $100,000 apiece.
   That was in 1994. Today, Velvet says they go for $300,000 to $500,000. Capes and belts are sold separately. Those are display attractions on their own, he explains.

(Top photo: Velvet and Linda Thompson, Elvis' former girlfriend, at museum opening Tuesday)