John Reeves
speaker
1,814 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2023
last heard Feb 2025
John Reeves’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
If I go to AMNH, let's say every day for, once a week for 52 weeks. It's the same displays every week. So all the stuff they collect doesn't go on display. It goes down in the storage or it goes out in the East River. The deal with my company, the nozzle men they called them, there were 200 guys working giants.
And the giant guys, the nozzle guys, part of the perks of working for that company was if you find a tusk, you can have it. They could take the tusks home with them. Really? Yeah, and the skulls and whatever else they found. No one cared back then. Nobody cared. The company didn't care. Take them.
And then these guys from New York, the swift-talking city dudes, they come in and go, oh, we want them. So they made it so the men couldn't take them. And they took them all. Scientific value, nothing. They took them all. Well, let's just imagine you're the grandson of one of the old-style nozzlemen who's now dead, but he passed that tusk along to his kid, and now it's yours.
That tusk could be worth $200,000. That could come in handy to that family. Maybe they could have used that money along the way instead of not having it.
And the letter that is on there talks about hundreds, hundreds of tusks that were shipped there. I've seen them. It's not like I'm making this shit up. I was down there. I took pictures of them.
In the basement. It's incredible. These big crates haven't been opened ever. And they're just filled with tusks. Well, the tusks are on these big shelves like you see at Costco. They go way up high. Yeah. Just shelves of tusks. Shelves and bison heads and stuff. And then the crates are the bones, leg bones, teeth.
Nobody gave a shit. My company didn't care until, you know, they didn't envision a guy like me come along and own in this company. When I bought the company, I started going through the files going, let's see what I bought. Oh, look at that. I got a lease with the government. Oh, here's another one. I got another lease with the government. Yeah, I got a piece over here a guy offered to buy.
Now I don't want to sell it. So I go through all these things, and I find the deal with the bones. And I went to the museum. I said, I bought Alaska Gold Company. I want to go get the bones. He goes, I was wondering when you're going to show up. Off to New York we go. Got bullshitted. Oh, yeah, we're going to return them after we take care of the asbestos abatement problem down there.
Anyway, I told you all this. They have yet to get a hold of us. It's gone to our state legislature to see if they can help. It's coming back to Alaska. Those are my bones. And if they're afraid that it's going to go, well, Reeves, you know, they're worth a lot of money. You know, he could sell them. Look, just send them back. And if I want to sell them, I'll sell them. They're my bones.
It doesn't even make any sense. It's a fucking hobby. You know, we're all queer for something. You know, some people collect stamps. Some people collect coins. My mom used to collect napkins, you know, quilts and stuff like that. I collect bones in historic sites. I got a degree in history. He probably didn't know that. Historic preservation. I like to fix up old shit.
Talking to a guy about Nenana, where the Golden Spike was driven by Harding. That just went up for auction on Christie's.
A Golden Spike, railroad spike, that Warren Harding came up and drove in the railroad back in the 20s when they completed the Alaska Railroad from Anchorage up to Nenana.
Well, they didn't leave it in there long. Oh. They drove it in. They took the photo op. They did all that.
Pulled it out. Then somebody bought it and somebody else bought it.
It was only valued at like $30,000 to $50,000.
Yeah. And I know the guys that bought it. I was on the auction. I had the guy on the phone. It didn't take long for it to go past, and I ain't buying it. I don't want it. And it kept going and kept going and kept going.
I was going to stop at around $70,000. It kept going. It kept going. It kept going.
That was given away to somebody. You think so?
Oh, they gave money, but it wasn't sold. It was like a donation. I'm a benefactor. Here's for the new wing. Right. What do you got? You got any of that Egyptian stuff laying around? Yeah. I want a sarcophagus. What do you say, boys?
Well, you can. They're always getting arrested for stealing shit. Mostly they're museum employees. If you ever Google, it's amazing what these guys steal from the. Oh, yeah. Museums aren't money makers. You're gonna make money, you're not gonna go own a museum. You're gonna go do whatever you do to make money.
Showing 461–480 of 1,814 · page 24 of 91
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