The license plates that were on the limousine carrying President John F Kennedy when he was assassinated 52 years ago are going up for auction.

The plates, which were once picked out of the garbage by the owner of retrofitting the car, are being offered by Heritage Auctions on Saturday in Dallas and the opening bid is $40,000.

The limo was reportedly sent for upgrades to a Cincinnati company after the assassination in November 1963, and the plates could have been lost forever if they had not been scooped up Willard Hess and stored for decades.

Despite being seen in countless images and videos from the day of the killing, the pieces of history are just now surfacing into the public eye and are expected to fetch more than six figures. 

The owner of Hess & Eisenhardt, Hess kept the plates between books on his bookshelf.

His daughter inherited them when her father died in 2000, and has kept them in a kitchen drawer in before offering them for auction almost 52 years after the death of Kennedy.

'My sons always wanted me to put them in a safe deposit box,' Jane Walker, 72, who still lives in Ohio, told She was in college at the time of the assassination and said that she remembered blood on the Lincoln Continental when it was taken in to her father's garage.

'I figure if anyone ever came in and saw them, they wouldn't know what they were'.

Heritage's Don Ackerman said that his company was 100 per cent sure that the plates were real. 

Expectations are that the plates, which would have expired in March 1964, will sell for more than $100,000. 

The buyer will also receive photos of the car being worked on at Hess's shop.

The limo and party bus service where JFK was shot continued to be used by President Lyndon Johnson.

It is currently on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.