I recall watching on the Today show in about 1999 or 2000 the story of somebody in Philadelphia buying a cheap end table at a rummage sale. Shortly after buying it, the person stored it for a short bit but one day began going through it’s drawers and it was filled with completely used autograph books (dated in the early to mid 1970s) that were in turned filled with celebrities’ (living and since passed away) signatures.
As it turned out, the end table had once belonged to an older and never married woman who regularly went to tapings of the Mike Douglas show and she got to meet the various actors and actresses and other celebrities of that time (she had autographs from John Lennon, Muhammad Ali, and many others considered very rare by experienced collectors) and actually became friends with a few (Mary Astor was mentioned, IIRC). And they even contacted Mike Douglas himself as he was still around at the time of this story and even he remembered this woman as a regular for his studio audiences.
The part of the story that had me shaking my head in awe was seeing the book labels with “1972 #4” or “1973 #1” and thinking that this lady must have collected all of these signatures during those years and just squirreled them away in this end table and they were still there after she passed.
Wow, that’s an amazing find!