Contributors
Rising Value of Unrestored Cars
By Malcolm Welford, Vintage Car Specialist
Celebrity Memorabilia
Go Out Of This World With DiCaprio For $1.5m
May 24, 2013Leonard DiCaprio is going into space on Richard Branson’s rocket this fall. Last night at a Cannes charity auction a Russian bid $1.5m to go with him. They will undergo astronaut training for 3-days before they blast off in the mothership from a California desert, detach, and go into orbit for nearly 3-hours. Nicole Kidman and Sharon Stone were the guest auctioneers.
Read more...Bizarre Topless Photo of Jolie, $45,500
May 16, 2013A bizarre topless photo of Angelina Jolie called “Horseplay” sold at Christie’s London auction last night for $45,500. The “Wild Side of Photography” sale was scheduled well before Jolie’s double mastectomy announcement. Taken when she was 25, the photo also prominently displays a “Billy Bob” tattoo, referring to former husband Thornton who has since been removed from her shoulder and her life.
Read more...Milton Berle’s Jokes Laugh To The Bank
May 08, 2013For $158,000 a bidder got Milton Berle’s library, including books and boxes of bound scripts and personal correspondence, but he didn’t get the comedian’s thousands of one-liners and jokes carefully catalogued over the decades. That file went for another $65,000 at Bonham’s Entertainment auction this week.
Read more...“Woz” Signed Apple 1 Appears At German Auction
May 03, 2013There are only some fifty surviving examples of the handmade Apple 1, the first computer sold by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and they’ve been rapidly gaining in value. Last year one sold for $624,000 at Team Breker in Cologne.Later this month the German auction house will offer another, one of only six still in working order. As a bonus, this motherboard sports Wozniak’s signature as “Woz.” It’s expected to sell for $260,000-$400,000.
Read more...See The Movie, Buy Robinson’s Glove, $1m
April 16, 2013This online auction couldn’t come at a better time for the Robinson family, putting up Jackie’s World Series, game-worn glove just as his biographical movie, “42,” is released. No question the glove was used—hard and long. Steiner Sports Auctions says it was found in an office Robinson once rented. It was authenticated by photo matching. High estimate is $1m.
Read more...Star Trek Gun Commands $231,000
April 08, 2013For Trekkies, the provenance was hard to beat. Even so, the price was unexpected. At a Los Angeles auction this weekend, a prop gun created for William Shatner to use in the second episode of the 1960s series “Star Trek” sold for a whopping $231,000. That was over four times its $50,000 estimate.
Read more...Beatles Signed Album Goes For A Maniacal $290,000
April 02, 2013Put it down to crazed Beatlemania or shrewd investment, whatever the reason, a Midwesterner bought a signed 1967 album of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for $290,500 at a Heritage auction over the weekend. Prior to that the highest price paid for a different signed Beatles album was $150,000.
Read more...Faulkner’s Nobel Medal For Sale
March 28, 2013After years of writing in obscurity William Faulkner rose to prominence as one of the pre-eminent writers of the 20th Century, capped by the award of a Nobel medal in 1949. At Sotheby’s in June, his family is selling the medal along with a trove of manuscripts, unpublished letters he wrote to his wife from Hollywood, even a handwritten draft of the speech he gave accepting the Nobel.
Read more...Jokes & Memorabilia From Milton Berle At Bonhams
March 12, 2013Comedy great Milton Berle spent some 85 of his 94 years on earth in show business, and most of them are documented in the archive that Bonhams will be offering this spring in Los Angeles. Included is his collection of working scripts, covering his years in vaudeville, radio, television and film (est. $80,000-$100,000), as well as his voluminous private joke file (est. $10,000-$15,000), and working script from “Let’s Make Love,” the film in which he appeared with Marilyn Monroe (est. $800-$1200).
Read more...Brando’s Golden Globe Seeks Gold
February 21, 2013It’s not as big, doesn’t weight as much, and isn’t as professionally important as an Oscar, but the Golden Globe awarded to Marlon Brando for “On The Waterfront” in 1954, will be auctioned by Heritage next Month. At least he accepted that one. The 1972 “Godfather” Globe that Brando rejected sold two years ago for $24,000.
Read more...JFK’s Bomber Jacket Goes For $570,000
February 18, 2013When Jack Kennedy rode on Air Force One, they gave him a personal leather bomber jacket with the Great Seal of The President on it. After JFK was assassinated 50-years ago, the jacket went to his close friend and aide, David Powers whose family consigned it to John McInnis Auctioneers. It sold yesterday for $570,000 in Cambridge, MA.
Read more...Rare Winston Churchill Poem At Bonhams
February 08, 2013Sir Winston Churchill was of course a man of protean accomplishments: soldier, diplomat, Nobel-prize winner for literature, sometime painter, and of course the statesman who led Great Britain through World War II. He was also, it turns out, a poet, although not a prolific one. He wrote only one known poem as an adult, which Bonhams will offer in a sale of retired manuscript dealer Roy Davids’ collection this spring in London. The 40-line opus, penned in blue crayon over two pages, is expected to sell for $18,833-$23,500.
Read more...Babe Ruth-Al Capone Signed Baseball In Auction
January 24, 2013If it isn’t one of the most historic baseballs, it’s certainly one of the strangest. In 1931, both Babe Ruth and gangster Al Capone, two of the most famous figures of the Jazz Age, signed the same baseball. It happened at the behest of Yankee hall of fame pitcher Herb Pennock, whose grandson is selling the ball, which the Mile High Card Co. is offering in an online auction ending January 31st. Current bidding stands at $26,250, but according to a report in The Chicago Sun-Times, the ball may go for as much as $200,000.
Read more...“Lincoln” Memorabilia At Charity Auction
January 16, 2013Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t the only one feeling the glow from his Golden Globe win. The Oscar favorite has arranged for memorabilia from the movie “Lincoln” to be auctioned to benefit a hospice foundation in Wicklow, Ireland. At his request, director Steven Spielberg has donated a variety of “Lincoln”-related items to the sale, including a script signed by members of the cast, Lincoln’s white gloves, and a handmade knife, among other props. The auction will take place at the film’s European premiere in Dublin next week.
Read more...‘Out Of Africa’ Airplane To Be Sold
January 04, 2013Soaring above the Kenyan savannah, it was featured in some of the most beautiful and romantic aerial footage ever filmed. Now the 1929 De Havilland Gypsy Moth biplane that Robert Redford’s character Denys Finch Hatton piloted in the 1985 Oscar-winning blockbuster, ‘Out of Africa,’ will star again, this time at Bonhams’ Retromobile auction in Paris, when its price is expected to climb beyond $180,000.
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