An eyewitness report of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, audio from the 1948 World Series broadcast and a recording of a live interview with Babe Ruth were supposed to have been in holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, part of the agency’s vast collection of materials available to scholars and the public.

Instead, those sound recordings and thousands of others made their way to the home of Leslie Charles Waffen, the former chief of the Archives’ Motion Picture, Sounds and Video Recording Branch, and some eventually wound up on eBay.