Lowell Hays had one of the strangest jobs in show business. He was Elvis Presley’s personal jeweler, and he didn’t work from a shop — he traveled with him to concerts, carrying a briefcase full of diamonds.
He stood at the side of the stage with that case every night, in case Elvis wanted something.
Which brings us to a show in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1975.
Partway through, Elvis came over to the edge of the stage and said: “Lowell, where’s your case?” Hays handed it up. Elvis opened it, took out a piece, ripped off the price tag, dropped the tag back in the case — which is how they kept inventory — and walked to the front of the stage to give it to a woman in the front row.
Then he did it again. And again.
Lowell Hays, Elvis Presley’s Jeweler, About Elvis Giving Away Jewelry To Fans
By the end of that night, Elvis had given away roughly $105,000 worth of jewelry in today’s money, which is comfortably over half a million.
Hays was horrified. His own account of what happened next is the best part of the whole story. He ran out the back door after the show, jumped into Elvis’s car and told him he was embarrassed — that he wished he had never brought the case, because Elvis had just handed a fortune to strangers.
Elvis laughed at him. Then he said: “You know what, Lowell? I’m going to have to sing five minutes more tomorrow night to pay for it.”
Hays designed the pieces that became Elvis’s signature — including the TCB necklace and ring, the lightning-bolt design meaning Taking Care of Business in a flash, and the enormous ring Elvis wore for Aloha from Hawaii.
And Elvis gave those away too. In 1975, he handed his original TCB ring to his gospel bass singer J.D. Sumner, on stage, in front of 14,000 people. Then he quietly asked Hays to make a replica, so his father, Vernon,n would not notice the original was gone.
That is why Elvis jewelry keeps turning up at auction decades later. He kept giving it away.