Associated Press Posted online: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 at 1117 hours IST
Nashville, Tennessee, May 16: The King's first home is now another man's castle. A ranch-style Memphis home that Elvis Presley bought in 1956 as his career was taking off has sold for US $ 905,100 on the online auction service eBay.
Peter Gleason, a New York attorney and retired fire-fighter, posted the high bid in the final seconds before the deadline Sunday.
Gleason said on Tuesday that he is a partner in a group that includes Israeli psychic Uri Geller. Their interest in the home is in restoring it to its 1956 lustre, down to the original wallpaper and floor coverings, and eventually opening it to the public.
"The present owners have done a phenomenal job starting that process," he said. "We want to piggyback on that and take it to the next level by turning it into a museum-quality piece of Americana."
The most recent public appraisal for tax purposes valued the house at US $ 261,000, said Stephen Shutts, who facilitated the ebay sale.
The current owners, Mike Freeman and Cindy Hazen, paid US $ 180,000 in 1998.
Lance Cowan of LcMedia, a Nashville firm that publicised the auction, said more than 225,000 hits were recorded and 71 bids posted since bidding began April 14.
Presley, then 21, bought the four-bedroom, 270-square-meter house with his early song royalties.
The singer, his parents and grandmother lived there for a year before moving to a two-story colonial house already known as Graceland, the house that Elvis would make famous.
