The Supercar Registry - 1969 COPO engine

Hello my name is Greg and this is my first post here. I'm 43 and live in SW Michigan (Kalamazoo area). I do not own, nor will I ever be able to own, a COPO car. Like them as much as anyone but I'm a blue-collar guy so my lot in life is to have basic driver cars to enjoy. Specifically I am a Buick guy. Did dabble in the supercar realm for a bit and owned a documented '70 GS455 Stage 1 car but recently sold it to help buy a house. Currently I only own a '65 Special 4dr 300ci 2bbl all original with 56k miles that is basically worthless but super fun to cruise around in.

The reason for my joining this group is that I have an older friend who is sitting on a valuable COPO engine and he is looking to sell it. He's 75 and not online except for basic Facebook functions, so he asked if I could help him get the word out about this engine. The engine is a '69 COPO Camaro 427 that is currently sitting in a '69 Corvette.

A little backstory: My friend bought a one-owner '69 Corvette from the original owner probably 20+ years ago. They became friends and still are to this day. I have never met the original owner of the Vette but I know he is near 80 by now and is apparently wealthy because I have heard stories from my friend about some amazing stuff this guy has. Anywho, the '69 Vette is an unrestored 427/435hp convertible with only 24,000 original miles. At some point during the original owner's ownership he pulled the engine for reasons not known by me. And then put the same engine back in, or so he thought. Fast forward to when my friend buys the car and at some point he decides to check the numbers on the motor and turns out that what was actually put back into the Vette by mistake was an original '69 COPO 427 engine! My friend tells him the original engine is not in the car and his reply was something like "huh, wonder how that happened. The original motor must be around here somewhere". My friend told him what was in there was a COPO motor and he was indifferent and seemed to not care. So the car has been sitting in a climate controlled garage for decades now and probably hasn't been on the road in at least 10-15 years. Ran and drove great when parked but my friend has many cars and did not care to do anything with it until now. The COPO engine is still in the Vette but is expected to be removed once the engine sells. I believe all of the accessories and radiator have been pulled so it's close to coming out, it's just not out yet. Not sure if he will get the original Vette engine to put back in but that is beside the point.

Now on to the engine specifics. The deck has numbers T0424MO, the back of the block is 3963512, and the heads are 3919840. It's definitely legit and so is my friend. He has been doing Camaro stuff since day 1 and has even been given a credit in a Camaro research book for his knowledge on them. He has never owned a COPO car and the engine in question is just a fluke for him so he is looking to cash out and get this thing to someone who needs it.

I can't pay to join this group so I hope it's okay that I am discussing this topic here as I am not able to post in the classified section due to being a non-paying member. If anyone is interested please pm me and I can get you his contact info to discuss it's current condition, configuration, and price. I do not have that info just trying to help him out as he is a good friend to me.

He threw out a number of $48k but I know he will sell for less.