Couple Cashing In With Celebrity Autographs

Judy and Larry Moss have collected more than 2,500 autographs in their pursuit of the rich and famous--all on crisp $1 bills.

“We got started on our honeymoon,” Mrs. Moss said. “We were in Disney World and we had no paper and (boxer) Joe Frazier walked by us. All we had was a dollar bill for him to sign.”

Now, thousands of miles--and dollar bills--later, the couple will pick up from their home on a moment’s notice and rush to a Superbowl game, a presidential inauguration, an Emmy Awards ceremony--wherever celebs gather.

“We’ve been to the Academy Awards seven times,” said the Memphis, Tenn. housewife.

“You’d be surprised how easy it is to get a ticket--all you have to do is ask to attend and buy a ticket,” her husband said.

During the Emmy Awards, the couple staked out stars who made their way through a crowded foyer to attend a $1,000-a-person tribute to actress Elizabeth Taylor.

Mrs. Moss, a petite, dark-haired woman in her late 30s, scrambled through the ornate Art Deco lobby of the Wiltern Theater. In the midst of a crush of snapping paparazzi, she ask the entertainers to sign the top of a stack of fresh $1 bills banded to her small clipboard.

Moss, meanwhile, kept his eye on the door and watched for autograph prey.

“Judy, did you get Richard Gere?,” the heavy-set man called out.

The Emmy weekend proved to be a gold mine. The Mosses collected about 50 autographs at the Taylor gala and dozens more at the award presentation on Sunday.

A weekend before they were in New York at a banquet for sports legends.

Their collection includes the autographs of 51 of the 52 American hostages in Iran, 11 of the astronauts who walked on the moon and a prized “Yalta Dollar,” a 1945 $1 bill signed at the Yalta Conference by Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill.

“That one we didn’t get in person,” Moss said. “We bought it.”

Each signed bill is encased in a lucite frame next to a magazine or newspaper picture of the celebrity. The collection take up so much space the couple said they are adding on a 20-by-40-foot room to their home.

Autograph collecting on dollar bills can be a costly endeavor. Moss said he cannot take out any insurance on the collection because cash cannot be insured.

“I’m scared to estimate how much we’ve spent over the years on this hobby,” said Moss, who is president of Interstate Blood Bank in Memphis. “But I can tell you, the dollar bills are the least expensive part of it.

“How can we afford it? I don’t know. We work hard,” he said, laughing

In their travels, the Mosses have encountered a number of celebrities who simply will not write on real money,

“A lot of people think it’s illegal,” said Mrs. Moss, recalling how at the Academy Awards one year, director Steven Speilberg and actress Jessica Lange both refused to sign her dollar bills.

But the couple has remedied that situation.

They have made thousands of dollar-bill replicas with the signatures of Judy Moss as “Secretary of the Treasury” and Larry Moss as “U.S. Treasurer.”

“That way, she said, “We can still get the autographs for our collection and nobody feels bad about signing money.”