text: Circulation In the late 1960s, Bill Hendrie found unretouched prints by Lange of Migrant Mother and 31 other images from the same series in a dumpster at the San Jose Chamber of Commerce. After the death of Hendrie and his wife, their daughter, Marian Tankersley, rediscovered the photos while emptying her parents' San Jose home. In October 2005, an anonymous buyer paid $296,000 at Sotheby's New York for the set—nearly six times their pre-bid estimate.
  In 1998, the retouched photo of Migrant Mother became a 32-cent U.S. Postal Service stamp in the 1930s portion of the Celebrate the Century series. The stamp printing was unusual, as daughters Katherine McIntosh (on the left in the stamp) and Norma Rydlewski (in Thompson's arms in the stamp) were alive at the time of the printing; usually, the Postal Service does not print stamps of individuals who have not been dead for at least 10 years.
  In the same month the U.S. stamp was issued, a print of the photograph with Lange's handwritten notes and signature sold in 1998 for $244,500 at Sotheby's New York. In November 2002, Dorothea Lange's personal print of Migrant Mother sold at Christie's New York for $141,500.
  Later life, death, and aftermath
  Thompson's children bought her a house in Modesto, California, in the 1970s, but she preferred living in a mobile home and moved back into one.