DB Cooper and the Money He Took
Dan Cooper has been in the news a bit lately — the FBI recently announced that they were ‘re-igniting’ the case (the case was never closed, thus can’t be reopened), releasing a significant amount of information to the public, in hopes of bringing in any evidence to help find Cooper. On Thanksgiving 1971, A man calling himself “Dan Cooper” boarded a plane, took it hostage, and demanded $200,000 and parachutes in exchange for releasing the passengers. A trade was made, Cooper’s plane was back in the air. Cooper opened the back door and jumped into oblivion, becoming a cultural icon as the only unsolved hijacking in the US.
He didn’t get the money free-and-clear, though; While the police had to quickly find ten-thousand $20 bills to give to Cooper, each bill’s serial number was recorded to help track Cooper as the money starts to turn up in banks. Quickly, however, people started checking their wallets and purses: if the twenties were in circulation, they could be anywhere. Actually owning one of the Cooper twenties was a real possibility. Newspapers printed the lists of serial numbers, in hopes a reader will find a twenty in their pocket. One newspaper offered $1,000 for the first Cooper twenty found — although, as a collector, I’d wager any Cooper twenties found would be worth immensely more than $1,000. Easily verifiable, the provenance of such money would be enormously valuable. Twenties from the seventies still turn up in curculation from time to time, and their worth to collectors is minor. A twenty dollar bill that was once strapped to Cooper’s chest as he hurled himself out of a plane would be extremely valuable.
Unfortunately, everyone came up empty-handed.
In 1980, 8-year-old Brian Ingram was playing along the banks of the Columbia River, and found something strange: wads of decomposing twenty dollar bills. Investigators dug through the banks in the area, finding around $5,400 of the $20,000 cache, apparently washed downstream some years after Cooper’s jump. Each $20 matched the serial number list. A few laters, at age 14, Ingram was given a portion of the found money as a sort of ‘finder’s fee.’ At that time, in a news article, he hinted he’d sell the money and pay for college.
I couldn’t tell if Ingram did at that time, but he held on enough to announce his intent to auction off some of his Cooper twenties on eBay. Ingram isn’t the only one, however. His ex-wife got some of the Cooper twenties while they were married, and she’s selling hers as well. Back in the seventies, nobody could get their hands on a DB Cooper twenty (although it seems Cooper himself couldn’t hold onto them either), but today’s your chance: a historical property, money worth far more than its face value.
