Aaron Pearl-Cropp of Springfield admitted the odds of him finding a pennant commemorating the 1963 March on Washington, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have A Dream speech, were very rare.
Pearl-Cropp, 52, a City of Springfield Public Works employee and a collector of civil rights memorabilia, said he had only seen the pennant twice, both times in museum settings, and an auction house he works with told him that it was a piece that rarely came up for sale.
But a chance conversation with a worker painting his house last summer eventually led to Pearl-Cropp landing the prize.