Going once. . . famous finds land on auction block
From Prince’s wardrobe to locks of David Bowie’s hair, celebrity items are hot buys
What did people spend their money on before famous people’s stuff started flooding global auctions? We won’t speculate. Instead, inspired by the sale of some Prince memorabilia on Friday, we present a look at some of the celebrity possessions that have drawn big bucks from collectors. Purple Rain brings big green The combination of rarity and recent death are irresistible for celebrity ephemera collectors. Two items worn by Prince in the 1984 movie Purple Rain sold at auction Friday for huge amounts over what was anticipated.
His short black-and-white jacket with leather sleeves and a highnecked, ruffled white shirt sold for $96,000 each. The preauction estimate for the items was $6,000 to $8,000 a piece.
Joe Maddalena, president of California auction house Profiles in History, said on the company website: “Very rarely are items from this superstar available for auction, so this creates a special event for us and for the world of collectors.”
Prince died in April. Hair, hair It could be the world’s priciest haircut. A slim lock of David Bowie’s bleached hair snipped in 1983 to help Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in London craft an authentic wig has sold for $18,750.
Heritage Auctions sold the hair, bound in blue thread and glued to a black-and-white photo of Bowie with the unnamed Tussauds wig mistress.
The auction house figured it would go for about $4,000, but it ended up selling for nearly five times as much.
The chameleonlike Bowie, who died in January, was going through a puffed and fluffed stage with his locks back then, around the time of the Serious Moonlight Tour. Princess style A teal sequined dress worn by Princess Diana on a 1986 state visit to Austria sold for $114,925 last month, but it won’t go into a private collector’s closet. Kerry Taylor Auctions says the Catherine Walker beauty was picked up by an unnamed British museum, meaning it will go on display in the future.
The London-based vintage fashion auction house has done well selling Diana wear, especially in 2013 with the deep-blue velvet gown dubbed “the John Travolta dress,” which she wore at a 1985 White House Gala dinner that included a well-documented dance-floor spin with the movie star. It sold for $362,424. Expect to see more Diana memorabilia crop up at auctions as the 20th anniversary of her death draws near in August 2017. Sit write here A wooden chair decorated with flair — and maybe possessing its own kind of magic — sold for $394,000 at a recent New York auction.
Part of an old dining room set, the simple seat is where author J.K. Rowling wrote her first two Harry Potter books. Originally a gift to Rowling in 1995, she donated it to a charity auction in 2002. But first, Rowling decorated it with inspiring words, including: “You may not find me pretty but don’t judge on what you see.”
The chair sold on eBay in 2009 and again in April for $394,000. The seller pledged 10 per cent of the sale profits to Lumos, Rowling’s children’s charity.