Someone entered the back stage dressing room at the arena on April 30th and took a suitcase which contained, among other special garments, a red custom-designed shirt adorned with nearly about 75,000 (the number is uncertain) hand-strung glass beads, a similar blue shirt, two handmade belts covered in black sequins with special buckles, and several fringed scarves similar to the ones worn by Neil Diamond in The Jazz Singer film.
When the entertainer returned from his set, Tom Sadge, who has been performing a Neil Diamond lookalike soundalike impersonation full-time for nearly 10 years, was shocked to find that his luggage, containing every piece of his professional wardrobe except for the black sequined jacket, pants and boots that he had worn during his performance, was missing. A vest, which is a copy of the one worn during Neil's "Love at the Greek" concert in 1976, was also spared: the celebrity had taken that with him for a brief costume change.
Police were, unfortunately, not notified because it was deduced that a fellow entertainer must have taken the suitcase by accident - which turned out NOT to be the case. Arena personnel were confused by the theft: the dressing room was filled with other, more seemingly valuable - and marketable - items such guitars and other equipment.
Ninteen years later, the costumes are STILL mission.
While the pieces are not worth much to anyone other than a Neil Diamond impersonatormor entertainer who wore sequinned costumes, they are very valuable to Tom Sadge: the red shirt alone took Marion, Tom's wife, two years to complete and contained thousands of hand-strung beads. The bes\lt alone took months to make, with each of many thousands of black sequins being positioned in an overlap (fish scale pattern) and hand sewn, twice, on the elastic belt.