A dozen $20 bills part of the $200,000 ransom D.B. Cooper was carrying will be up for auction Friday and Saturday at Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries.

Brian Ingram was eight years old when he found the deteriorating bills on the shore of the Columbia River near Portland in 1980, nine years after Cooper’s notorious 1971 hijacking of a Northwest Orient flight from Portland to Seattle.

Now the Mena, Ark., resident is selling his treasure through a live, online auction with Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries.

In November 1971, a man identifying himself as Dan Cooper, later mistakenly called D.B. Cooper, hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland to Seattle, claiming he had a bomb.

At Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and four parachutes and asked to be flown to Mexico. He jumped from the plane somewhere in Southwest Washington.

There was no trace of Cooper until Ingram came upon the $5,880 while brushing his hand over the sand, trying to clear a site for a campfire.

Anyone with information about the skyjacking is encouraged to contact the FBI’s Seattle office by e-mail at fbise@leo.gov. Additional information about the auction will be available from Heritage Auction Galleries, online at www.HA.com, and by phone at (800) 872-6467.

Posted: 06|13|08 at 7:25 am. Filed under: US News.