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It features a high-tech, deliberately balanced presentation of the war rich with relics, from Stonewall Jackson's battle gauntlet to Lincoln's second inaugural top hat. The prized memorabilia that motivated the defrauders can best be appreciated in a visit to the $50 million collection here in the handsome new museum, 40 miles north of Gettysburg. Pickett are increasingly at risk as the market booms and charlatans arise, bedeviling the majority of honest dealers in the process. Jorgensen as ''moneyed people who will buy a $50,000 sword with a gold hilt and a couple diamonds and an inscription to a general.'' He says guileless descendants like Mr. There are perhaps 40 or 50 private collectors described by Mr. They'd pay $5,000 per cannon and resell them for $30,000.'' ''They wrote to private cemeteries all over the country that had decorative Civil War cannon, making a big pitch about their historic mission. Peter Jorgensen, publisher of The Civil War News, a respected journal for buffs and collectors that helped uncover the fraud. ''And then there was the cannon scheme,'' says C. Pickett discovered that some rare framed photographs of the general borrowed for laser duplication were returned with the copies, not the originals, in the frames. Pritchard increased the collector's price of another supposedly negligible offering, an officer's tunic, by having Tiffany's make four gold stars that he sewed on before selling it for $51,500. The three men told one victim that an heirloom uniform was a mere ''costume'' that they donated to Goodwill Industries in reality, it was sold privately for $67,500. He would grossly underpay for the items and then resell them for much more in the legitimate market. He presented himself as an agent of the Harrisburg museum interested only in providing a historic showcase and a fair price to the family.
Pritchard would seek out aged and infirm family members of war figures, including Mr. Reed, these schemers were able to track down treasures that might never have been found and put into public view but for their brazen methods. Russell Pritchard Jr., who possesses far more genuine expertise than his salesman son as the longtime director of the Civil War Library and Museum in Philadelphia, was also convicted.
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The two staged fake appraisals on the TV ''Roadshow'' that increased their reputations and access to family treasures.
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Pritchard and his partner and veteran dealer, George Juno, were convicted in an ambitious series of frauds.
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The general's descendant says he has thus far been frustrated in obtaining the full $800,000 in restitution the courts ordered the defendants to pay him.
''We paid top market value, and the courts have ruled the Pickett collection remains rightfully ours.''
''We had a zero role in the duplicity of those scoundrels,'' says the mayor, lapsing into unprintable language at the scope of the fraud that federal authorities uncovered in the busy Civil War marketplace.
Reed, this capital city's 20-year chief executive and reigning Civil War buff who avidly envisioned and created the $32 million museum. ''It's great stuff never before seen,'' says Mayor Stephen R. No less do they savor the general's military sash, a lock of his golden, Custer-like curls and, most impressive, a map he drew, unknown until now, of the lethal battlefield that marked the retreat of Robert E. Pritchard then sold the trove to the war museum here for a fair-market price of $870,000, pocketing the profit.įrom North and South, the buffs are journeying here in increasing numbers to stare reverently at the Pickett kepi. Fast as a midnight flanking movement, Mr.
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