Like the piano on which Freddie Mercury composed Bohemian Rhapsody or the hat worn by Michael Jackson for his first “moonwalk”, up for auction in September, here are other celebrity relics that have set the auctions alight.
A buyer paid $4.8 million in November 2016 to acquire the mythical tight dress that Marilyn Monroe wore to lasciviously sing Happy Birthday Mr President to President John F. Kennedy for his 45th birthday, auctioned by Julien’s Auctions.
The dress hugged Marilyn so closely that it had to be sewn on the legendary actress and singer shortly before she took the stage at Madison Square Garden in New York on May 19, 1962. Many of Marilyn’s other dresses are passed under the hammer of the auctioneers.
Also read: Marilyn Monroe: “Happy Birthday” dress soars at $4.8 million
The guitar on which Kurt Cobain recorded Nirvana’s famous Unplugged concert in 1993 was sold in June 2020 for $6 million at an auction at Julien’s. A record for a guitar.
Until then, the most expensive guitar was a Fender Stratocaster, called the Black Strat, used by the guitarist of the British group Pink Floyd, David Gilmour. It was sold by the musician for $3.975 million, during a sale organized in June 2019 by Christie’s for the benefit of charitable works.
Also read: A guitar broken by Kurt Cobain on stage sold for $600,000
Sotheby’s sold in September 2022 for $10.1 million for the number 23 jersey that basketball player Michael Jordan wore during his last victorious NBA title, in 1998, setting an absolute record for a sporting item.
Other jerseys have reached peaks, such as that of footballer Diego Maradona sold for $9.3 million in May 2022 or that of basketball player Kobe Bryant sold for 5.8 million in February 2023, three years after his death at age 41 in a helicopter crash. Both at Sotheby’s. Another sporting relic, the ball with which Diego Maradona scored his legendary goal at the 1986 World Cup with the help of “the hand of God”. It sold for £2 million at Graham Budd Auctions in November 2022.
The original manuscript of Bob Dylan’s most famous song, Like a Rolling Stone, sold for $2 million in June 2014 at Sotheby’s, becoming the most expensive song manuscript at auction.
More recently, the manuscript of Starman, David Bowie’s 1972 hit, was sold in September 2022 for 203,500 pounds at Omega Auctions.
A beige leather glove decorated with rhinestones, worn by Michael Jackson in 1983 when he performed his famous “Moonwalk” for the first time, sold for $350,000 in New York in November 2009, during a frenzied auction of objects of the pop star who died the same year at age 50 of a drug overdose.
