Wholesaler selling £1 million worth of superfan’s Elvis memorabilia following biopic success

He may have been gone nearly 45 years now, but Elvis Fever is still very real, not least since the release of his biopic, which has been a box office hit and sent search volume for the late star skyrocketing by over 400 percent in the last month.

And not only that, but it seems avid collectors are willing to take any bit of memorabilia they can get their hands on, as searches for ‘Elvis memorabilia’ increased 125 percent in the last six months, to 360 people on average per month in the UK alone.

That’s good news for Karl Baxter, Managing Director of Wholesale Clearance UK, who has thousands of pieces of genuine Elvis memorabilia sitting in storage, that he acquired from Elvis superfan Sid Shaw.

In 2020, Mr Baxter was approached by Sid Shaw, Elvis’s second-biggest fan, to help sell some of his Elvis memorabilia after fracturing his spine in 2015 left him too unwell to continue his business and the costs of storage for his large collection proved too expensive.

Sid started his company Elvisly Yours over 40 years ago and travelled the world collecting and selling a range of genuine memorabilia to share his love for the star. But following a decline in his health, he passed on his collection to the Poole-based wholesaler.

Shaw’s entire collection is estimated to be worth over £1 million and has a wide variety of items, ranging from postcards, posters and books to some of his more personal possessions.

Currently up for auction is a pallet of 8551 Elvis magazines from 1980, estimated to be worth at least £200,000 and various mixed palettes containing magazines, calendars, books and assorted memorabilia from Elvisly Yours, whom famously won the rights to produce official Elvis Presley merchandise.

Other stock in the Elvis superfan’s collection includes dozens of strands of Elvis’s hair – authenticated by the star’s hairdresser. This isn’t the first time the star’s locks have proved profitable, with one avid fan purchasing a jar of his hair for over $72 000 in 2021.

Shaw also managed to get his hands on a guitar that belonged to the King and newspaper negatives from various news articles related to Elvis, including those announcing his untimely death.

Yet, while business is booming for Mr Baxter, there has been a little less conversation about his memorabilia since he acquired the stock as he admits to having too much to go through without the help of Sid Shaw in recent months.

He hopes that the surge in sales for Elvis memorabilia will help him shift some of the magazines and smaller items of stock, so he can begin selling some of the more personal pieces in the Elvisly Yours collection.

Karl Baxter, Managing Director at Wholesale Clearance, commented:

“We were over the moon when Sid Shaw approached us to help sell his incredible collection of Elvis Presley memorabilia.

While sales have been slower than expected, we have experienced a surge in interest since the release of the film and help Mr.Shaw recoup his investment in the memorabilia.

There are some great one-of-a-kind pieces in there, too many to even count, which any fan would be lucky to get their hands on. All we want is for Elvis to leave the building!”