A History of Violence

Percy worked until he was 86 and then handed the reins over to Don when the shop was forced to move yet again in 1969. The building they were leasing was being torn down to make way for the new convention center. Don Dow found a new and permanent location on Camp Bowie Boulevard near the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

“My dad was getting tired of being kicked out of places,” Greg said.

Dow developed diabetes when he was 65 but continued working into his 80s.

“He wouldn’t take his medicine, wouldn’t follow the doctors’ orders, but he lived to be 84,” Greg said.

He collected things the old-fashioned way, tracking down items without the internet or online auctions. He worked the phones, wrote letters, mixed with other collectors, attended swap shows, and pored over collector catalogues. Amassing the Lincoln items on a limited budget was an extraordinary feat, said Don Ackerman, consignment director with Heritage Auctions.

“There are very significant, rare pieces that only show up at auction once every 20 or 30 years,” Ackerman said. “Mr. Dow had limited resources, and sometimes at auction he was competing against [other bidders] who had really deep pockets.”

He described Dow as “an obsessive, dedicated collector.”

That obsession eventually worried his wife, Betty. Her husband was spending a lot of money and taking time away from work in his Lincoln pursuits. When trade catalogues arrived in the mail at the shop, he’d stop whatever he was doing and spend hours reading them, looking for artifacts, and calling dealers.

“This went on for so many years that his wife started trying to put the brakes on it,” Barker said. “He would sort of hide out in the back and place his orders, and she’d go back to find out what he was doing.”

His love of collecting ended only with his death. Now everything he amassed in his lifetime is returning to the market, filling the wish lists of other people with their own desires to find and own a piece of history.