How much did Elvis pressley's casket cost?

Answer 1

Most probably only the family and the funeral home know the exact retail price of Elvis' casket. One does know that around $ 8,000 had been paid 20 years before at the funeral of his mother who was buried in the same kind of casket. At the time of Elvis' death, the wholesale price of his casket was already between $ 5,000 and 6,000. That price was about 10 to 12 times that of standard 32 oz copper sheet caskets in the 1970s.

The casket is no longer in production. Elvis was buried in one of the last seamless copper deposit units manufactured by the National Casket Company of Boston until the early 1980s. Copper deposit caskets are neither welded from sheets of wrought copper as standard copper caskets are, nor are they copper liners (as formerly used inside of luxury wooden caskets). The often used description "a copper lined casket" therefore is misleading. Copper deposit caskets are made by a very time consuming electrolytic process in which molecules of copper are deposited upon a casket form. This provides the casket with extra strength and with a very smooth and untarnished surface without welding seams or burns. The thickness of walls of copper deposit caskets is typically 1/8" (3mm), which results in a pure copper weight of around 600 lbs. The complete caskets weigh usually between 600 and 800 lbs empty (while most sheet copper casket weigh between 200 and 300 lbs) depending on the shape of the casket, the type of casket top (single, double or triple lid with or without inner glass panel), the type of handles and on the kind of mattress and lining used in it. National casket was famous for their seamless copper deposit caskets: they had no joints or welding seams nor did the attachments of the handles penetrate the casket walls. The company manufactured several designs. The design No. 21200 used for Elvis had a very stately form with heavily rounded corners. It was used also for the burials of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.

Answer 2

3,000