Want to know how much the late Yankee star Thurman Munson brought home each payday in 1978? What mobster Meyer Lansky paid in state income taxes in 1936? How much Lou Costello tipped a supper-club waiter in 1945? The answers, in order, are $26,687.19, $889.50, and $2 (on an $8.10 check).
Craig Peligri, 40, a CPA from Hackensack, collects personal and payroll checks from some of America’s most famous—and notorious—personalities. In the past fifteen years, Peligri has amassed more than 300 checks written by or to athletes, actors, and public officials, among them nine Presidents. “It is something to collect that is a little bit different,” says Peligri, who buys from trade shows and memorabilia dealers.
Among the collection’s highlights: a $17.36 check that Jack Ruby used to pay a phone bill for one of his strip clubs in March 1961 and a check for $11,400 that Richard Nixon paid to the IRS in 1965. Peligri owns checks from Lucille Ball, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and the Three Stooges, along with a $47 check written by Marilyn Monroe to a furniture dealer in July 1962, just weeks before her death. “When she died, he tried to cash it,” Peligri says of the dealer, “and it was returned because they had frozen all of her assets.”
Article from November, 2005 Issue.