John Lennon has been dead for 30 years, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still on the case. 
 
 On Wednesday morning a small pop-culture memorabilia shop in Midtown opened an 836-lot auction timed to what would have been Lennon’s 70th birthday, which is Saturday. The prized item was a set of Lennon’s fingerprints made in 1976 as part of his application for citizenship. Minimum bid: $100,000. 
 
 But after an hourlong standoff involving cellphone calls, faxes and meetings with an agent in a parked car outside the East 57th Street storefront, the F.B.I. served the shop — called Gotta Have It! — with a subpoena and seized the fingerprint card, which was made at a New York police station on May 8, 1976, and bears a signature and the name John Winston Ono Lennon. 
 
 Given Lennon’s history with the F.B.I. — he was under surveillance in the early 1970s for his antiwar activism — the events were strange enough to make Peter Siegel, an owner of the store, wonder what the fuss was about. Since last Thursday, he said, the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security and the United States attorney in Manhattan had asked about the card. 
 
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 “I’ve been doing this 20 years and have never had this much government interest in something,” Mr. Siegel said. “Here he is, one of our greatest musicians ever, and they just don’t stop investigating this guy.” ||||| The “Double Fantasy” album that John Lennon signed for his killer Mark David Chapman just five hours before he was assassinated is up for sale for $1.5 million. 
 
 One of the most gruesome artifacts of rock history is up for sale through dealer Moments in Time. 
 
 On Dec. 8, 1980, just hours before Lennon’s death, Chapman was photographed approaching the Beatle outside his home at the Dakota building to get him to sign the record. 
 
 When Lennon returned home later with his wife, Yoko Ono, from a recording session, he was shot dead by Chapman. 
 
 In the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, the album was dropped on the floor, and a maintenance man found it in a planter at the Dakota entrance, handing it over to police as evidence. 
 
 It was later returned by New York City prosecutors to the maintenance man with a letter of thanks from the district attorney involved in the prosecution of Chapman. 
 
 The album — which has been described as “the most extraordinary artifact in rock ’n’ roll history” — has been sold a number of times since, including in 1998 for $150,000 and most recently in 2010 for $850,000. 
 
 Seller Moments in Time’s Gary Zimet said, “This is an important piece of music memorabilia as well as a major part of history. This is a fixed-price sale.” He refused to reveal the identity of the owner who wishes to sell. 
 
 Chapman is serving 20 years to life imprisonment for second degree murder and has been denied parole nine times. He once sought to reclaim the album, writing in a 1986 letter that it would be “the least [he] could do” to auction for a children’s charity. 
 
 Click here for more in the New York Post. ||||| An original tape from a recording and play list of a Beatles concert on Aug. 30, 1965, is displayed at the police headquarters in Berlin, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2017 after German police have arrested a man... (Associated Press) 
 
 An original tape from a recording and play list of a Beatles concert on Aug. 30, 1965, is displayed at the police headquarters in Berlin, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2017 after German police have arrested a man suspected of handling stolen objects from the estate of John Lennon, including diaries which were... (Associated Press) 
 
 BERLIN (AP) — German police recovered around 100 items that belonged to late Beatles star John Lennon that were stolen from his widow in New York, including three diaries, two pairs of his signature metal-rimmed glasses, a cigarette case and a handwritten music score. 
 
 The retrieved possessions were displayed Tuesday at Berlin police headquarters. 
 
 "This was a spectacular, unusual criminal case," police spokesman Winfrid Wenzel told reporters. 
 
 German authorities first became aware of the items, stolen from Yoko Ono at her New York home in 2006, when a bankruptcy administrator for the Berlin auction house Auctionata contacted them in July. The administrator had found the memorabilia in the company's storage. 
 
 Police confiscated the items from the auctioneers two weeks later, and on Monday arrested a suspect and raided his Berlin home and cars. They said another suspect, who is living in Turkey, is currently "not available," but they would try to get him extradited to Germany. 
 
 During their investigation, police officers and prosecutors also flew to New York, where they met Ono to have her verify the stolen goods' authenticity. 
 
 "She was very emotional and we noticed clearly how much these things mean to her and how happy she would be to have them back," prosecutor Susann Wettley said of the moment they showed Ono some of the recovered items and pictures of some others. 
 
 Wettley said that Ono's former driver, who is now living in Turkey, is one of the suspects. He has a previous conviction in New York related to the stolen items, she said. 
 
 The other suspect, who was arrested in Berlin on Monday, was identified as a 58-year-old German businessman of Turkish origin. During the search of his car, police said they found additional belongings of Lennon in a briefcase hidden under the spare tire in the trunk. Neither suspect's name was released because of German privacy rules. 
 
 Police are still checking confiscated computer files and business contracts to better understand how exactly the stolen goods ended up at the auction house in Berlin and if the auctioneers were aware that they bought stolen goods from the two suspects. They said the items have been in possession of Auctionata since 2014, but were never available for sale online. 
 
 The trove of Lennon memorabilia also includes a recording of a Beatles concert from 1965, a school exercise book from 1952, contract documents for the copyright of Lennon's "I'm the Greatest" song and handwritten scores for "Woman" and "Just like starting over." 
 
 There are also three of Lennon's leather-bound diaries, from 1975, 1979 and 1980. The last entry was made by Lennon on the morning of Dec. 8, 1980, a few hours before he was killed, Wettley said. 
 
 It included a note on the famous photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz that same day showing a naked Lennon embracing his wife. 
 
 It wasn't immediately clear when Ono will get all the items back.
– The FBI swooped into a Manhattan auction of John Lennon memorabilia yesterday and grabbed a fingerprint card of the legendary Beatle taken at a city police station. Managers of the Gotta Have It! store expected the card to be the biggest sale of the auction, and had set a minimum bid of $100,000. It wasn't immediately clear why the feds seized the card, which was made in 1976 as part of the singer's application for US citizenship and bears the signature John Winston Ono Lennon. Lennon was under FBI surveillance in the early '70s because of his anti-war activism. “I’ve been doing this 20 years and have never had this much government interest in something,” said Peter Siegel, an owner of the store. “Here he is, one of our greatest musicians ever, and they just don’t stop investigating this guy.” Siegel said he received calls about the card from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the US attorney's office in Manhattan. One official told the New York Times that investigators are attempting to determine "how that item came to be up for auction.” Siegel said the card is being sold for a private owner who bought the card at a Beatles convention. Lennon would have turned 70 on Saturday.