GOING, GOING, GONE
Curiosities under the hammer: Churchill’s cigar butt, Hitler’s lavatory seat, Gandhi’s glasses and more...
• A pair of glasses once owned by Mahatma Gandhi sold for £260,000 at auction in Bristol on 21 August 2020, 26 times their guide price. They were given to the current owner’s uncle in the 1920s and sold to a US collector. A shawl worn by Gandhi sold in 2013 for £40,000. D.Mirror, 22 Aug 2020.
• The 5in (13cm) steel key to Napoleon’s prison bedroom in Longwood House, St Helena, was auctioned online by Sotheby’s in January for £81,900. The emperor was held prisoner on the South Atlantic island, where he died in 1821. The key was taken on 6 September 1822 by Charles Richard Fox, who later became a general. He gave it to his mother, Baroness Holland, a “super fan” of Napoleon, who already had a collection of items connected to the emperor, including one of his socks. Her descendants, living near Edinburgh, found the key in an old trunk. D.Telegraph, 11 Jan; BBC News, 14 Jan 2021.
• A leather jug made from Blackjack, Oliver Cromwell’s war horse, was sold by Duke’s auctioneers of Dorchester, Dorset, in March for £9,620 after a bidding war. The 2ft (60cm) high tankard was made for the Lord Protector from his horse’s hide and used to carry water or ale. It bears a silver armorial mount (possibly added later) with the Cromwell coat of arms, the date 1653 and the motto ‘Pax Quæritur Bello’ (Peace is sought by war), which is found on his coinage. The jug has been passed down in the Hoare banking family. Metro, 1 Mar 2021.
• A half-smoked cigar discarded by Winston Churchill went under the hammer at Bellman’s auction house in Wisborough Green, West Sussex, in May, where it was expected to fetch around £800; in the end, it sold
for £3,500 (£4,270 including a buyer’s premium). The cigar butt had been tossed aside by Britain’s wartime prime minster in the 1940s, when it was picked up by Arthur Church, a policeman who was escorting Churchill at the time. The cigar had remained in Mr Church’s family until its sale. Another of Churchill’s half-smoked cigars, this one discarded in 1947, fetched £9,000 at auction in Boston in 2017. BBC News, 26 May; Mid Sussex Times, 28 May 2021.
• Hitler’s white wooden lavatory seat with lid – from his bathroom at the Berghof, his retreat in the Bavarian Alps – sold for $18,750 (£13,750) on 9 February to an anonymous buyer. It was seized by Ragnvald C Borch, one of the first GIs on the scene in May 1945. When asked by another soldier why he was carrying a lavatory seat, Sergeant Borch replied: “Where do you think Hitler put his ass?” His son put the Nazi relic up for sale at Alexander Historical Auctions in Maryland. Also in the “spoils of war” sale were Eva Braun’s lace knickers and pink nightgown, which fetched £1,300 each. A pair of her stockings went for £350. D.Mail, 1 Feb; Sun, 10 Feb 2021.
• One-off anomalies can sometimes fetch eye-watering sums. A $20 bill with a Del Monte banana sticker beside the portrait of former President Andrew Jackson sold for £289,439 in January after a bidding war between four buyers. The note was dispensed by a cash machine in 2004 to a student who flogged it on eBay for about £8,000. How the sticker got there remains a mystery. “There no telling if it was affixed to test printing standards or just a prank by a worker,” said Dallas-based Heritage auctions. Metro, 25 Jan 2021.
• Dentures belonging to Michael Jackson’s father Joe came up for auction in Las Vegas on 29 September 2020, with bidding starting at £200. Joe Jackson died in 2018, aged 89. Various websites seem curiously coy about telling us how much the dentures actually fetched. Sunday People, 27 Sept 2020.
• A strand of Elvis Presley’s quiff sold at auction for £4,000 in November. The hair was collected by Memphis barber Homer Gilleland, who even cut the King’s hair on tour and on film sets. After Elvis died, Gilleland would give a few strands to fans taped to a card; when he retired, he began to sell the hair. This particular lock belonged to Tom Unwin, 75, from Kidsgrove, Staffordshire, who bought it 10 years ago. BBC News, 19 Nov 2020.
• A “teapot” discovered in a Derbyshire garage during lockdown and almost sent to a charity shop, sold at auction for £468,000 to an anonymous Chinese bidder on 24 September 2020. The 6in (15cm) yellow enamelled vessel, decorated with peonies,
TOP LEFT: A white wooden lavatory seat from Hitler’s Berghof, seized by a GI in 1945. BELOW LEFT: A lock of Elvis Presley’s hair, saved by a Memphis barber. turned out to be a Chinese wine ewer from the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (17351796). Only three others are known – two in Beijing and one in Taiwan. D.Mail, Sun, 10 +25 Sept 2020.
• A bottle of whisky dubbed “the holy grail of single malts” sold at an online auction in February for £1 million. The Macallan was one of only 14 of its kind from the Moray distillery’s legendary cask number 263, the world’s most celebrated whisky cask. The Spanish oak sherry hogshead was filled in 1926, and the drink was allowed to mature for 60 years before it was bottled in 1986. The world record for a bottle of whisky at auction stands at £1.2 million (nearly £1.5 million with premiums) for a bottle from the same batch, sold at Sotheby’s in October 2019. D.Mail, 24 Feb 2021.
• A racing pigeon sold for a record-breaking $1.44 million in an online auction on 15 November after a bidding war between two Chinese rivals calling themselves Super Duper and Hitman. Super Duper won. Two-year-old female New Kim was reared by world-renowned Belgian breeder Gaston van der Wouwer. The previous world record was set in 2019 when a Chinese construction tycoon bought Armando, also bred by the now retired Mr van der Wouwer, for £1.1 million. D.Mail, 16 Nov 2020.
• An extremely rare purplepink diamond described as “a true wonder of nature” sold for almost £20 million last November at Sotheby’s in Geneva. The Spirit of the Rose (named after a ballet starring Vaslav Nijinsky) was mined in Russia in 2017. [R] Metro, 13 Nov 2020.