Man hopes Hefner signs ’53 Playboy first edition
Magazine was passed down by uncle
The very first issue of Playboy magazine from December 1953 is the most valuable among collectors, and Carl Veenendaal has one that once belonged to the namesake uncle he never met.
Marilyn Monroe is on the cover and naked inside as the “Sweetheart of the Month.” All this apparently was enough to make that uncle, Carl Krecklow, plunk down 50 cents to take it home.
Uncle Carl lived in Milwaukee. The decorated Air Force captain flew 27 combat missions over Europe in World War II as navigator on a B-17 bomber. Later, he served in the Wisconsin Air National Guard and, at age 35, was killed in a military training plane crash in Georgia on Oct. 26, 1956.
His sister, Maryann, found the Playboy among his things. Perhaps thinking the 3-yearold magazine would be valuable someday, she kept it.
Three decades went by. In the late 1980s, Maryann became ill with cancer, and she passed the magazine and a few other items to her son Carl before she died in 1989.
I can tell you my own mother would have tossed away that racy magazine the first day she found it, but since it had belonged to Uncle Carl, Maryann figured it was worth saving.
So young Carl, who is now 57, living in Brookfield and working as a financial adviser, has owned the vintage magazine while a few more decades have passed.
Until recently he thought he had lost it, maybe left it behind by accident above the ceiling panels of his former home in Boston. Over the years, he considered going back to the house and asking the owners if he could look for it.
“It always bothered me as to where it was,” he said.
Last month, Carl suddenly had a hunch that the magazine was tucked inside a particular book. He went to the basement to look, but found nothing in that book. The coffee table book next to it, the best of Life magazine, jarred something in his memory. He opened the book and there was Marilyn waving at him from the black and white cover.
Carl’s wife, Diane, was fixing dinner. “He comes up and he’s like, ‘I found it! I found it!’ “she said. He had never mentioned the magazine to her until then. It’s not sealed in plastic or a plain brown wrapper, but remains in excellent condition.
Carl looked online to see what the first Playboy might be worth. Depending on condition, it can fetch a few thousand dollars or even tens of thousands. Only about 54,000 copies were sold, but Playboy circulation quickly jumped into the millions.
“I happened to notice that the value increases tremendously if one of these magazines has Hugh Hefner’s signature. So I’m thinking, wow, Hugh Hefner is still alive. There’s still a chance,” he said.
He found an eBay listing for an autographed first edition at an astounding $495,000. The gears began turning. He would try to get Playboy founder Hefner to sign his first edition, the one he produced on a kitchen table in his Chicagoland apartment.
Maybe Carl would fly out to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles to pay 90-year-old Hefner a visit. He played out the scenario in his mind, and it didn’t end well:
“I could knock on his gate. It’s probably not a door. It’s probably a gate. Nobody will answer. And if there is a security guy there, well you know he’s not going to let me in with a briefcase. Who knows what’s in the briefcase. Then all of a sudden two cops are coming and they’re taking me down to the precinct and arresting me for vagrancy or whatever.”
Carl began asking all his friends and clients if they had any connections to Playboy or Hefner. Nobody did. Then he called me, and that’s where this article came from. Hefner will read it and want to make Carl happy. Or not.
I called the Playboy Mansion and was surprised to get a live person on the line. He concurred that showing up at Hef’s door definitely wouldn’t work, and then he referred me to Playboy public relations person Teri Thomerson.
She replied to me by email: “Thank you for the inquiry, but at this time Mr. Hefner is not granting requests for his signature on Playboy collectibles. I’m sorry I couldn’t deliver more encouraging news.”
OK, we’ll take that as a maybe. The folks at Playboy have been known to change their minds, like this year when they brought back full nudity in the magazine after admitting it was a mistake to get rid of it a year earlier.
With or without the signature, Carl is planning to pass along the preserved Playboy to his 30-year-old son, also Carl. He’s been explaining to him who the blonde woman on the cover was.