Because of its vast importance in the history of science, this model would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars - perhaps even millions -  to collectors today.  Unfortunately nobody seems to know what happened to it ......... the best guess is that it was thrown out in the trash in the late 1950's!

This famous photograph shows Francis Crick pointing to their model of DNA.  He is using a slide rule as a pointer, which they used to calculate the atomic distances between the bases and the base pairs.  James Watson is standing to the lower left. 

In this photograph Francis Crick looks somewhat like a pedantic know-it-all, which matches Watson's famous line: " I have never known Francis Crick in a modest mood". However this is probably unfair; according to one of his obituaries (Eagleman, D.M., Vision Res. 45:301), "He was one of the few people always willing to criticize his own ideas. He never filtered beliefs through his own ego, and never hesitated to applaud other people's theories". And from John Horgan,  "His immodesty, such as it is, comes simply from wanting to know how things work, regardless of the consequences. He cannot tolerate obfuscation or wishful thinking." This attitude about the primacy of knowledge is captured in a third quote from Francis Crick himself, which should be better known:  "It seems to me that what we lose in mystery, we gain in awe".

James Watson does not look like one of the most brilliant people of his generation, and one feels that in the next few moments he was drooling down his shirt front. However, the photograph is misleading here as well. In reality, the 50 years subsequent have proved his brilliance not only as a scientist, but as a statesman of science. James Watson has been the Thomas Huxley, and more, of the 20th century. Most tellingly, without his perspicacity, gravitas, and political bludgeoning, the Human Genome Project, and the entire field of Genomics, would have been drastically delayed.