Sold! A cupboard for eternity - with Marilyn and Hugh, writes CRAIG BROWN trends now
The oddest things sell at auction. In April 2011, a prosthetic pointed ear worn by Leonard Nimoy in his role as Mr Spock on Star Trek sold for £700 at auction in Los Angeles.
A 44-year-old slice of wedding cake from Princess Anne's 1973 marriage to Captain Mark Phillips sold at auction in Colchester for £40 in 2017. At the end of last year, Sotheby's sold Freddie Mercury's moustache comb for £152,000.
Many celebrity items are a little creepy. In 2009, nine bottles of pills issued to Elvis Presley the day before his death sold for $46,327. In 2020, the album cover John Lennon signed for Mark Chapman a few hours before Chapman shot him dead went for $900,000.
Buyers will pay over the odds for clothes bearing bodily traces of their late celebrity owners. The late Kurt Cobain's cardigan went up for auction in 2019.
A pocket contained what was described as 'a small amount of something brown and crusty, possibly dried vomit'.
At the end of last year, Sotheby's sold Freddie Mercury 's moustache comb for £152,000
Iconic: The olive green cardigan that Kurt Cobain wore during Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance in New York City went up for auction in 2019 and sold for $334,000
This past weekend, Julien's Auctions of Los Angeles staged a sale under the heading Icons: Playboy, Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe
In a normal sale, this would have been grounds for a refund, but in the celebrity auction it served only to increase its value. After fierce bidding, the crusty cardigan sold for $334,000.
This past weekend, Julien's Auctions of Los Angeles staged a sale under the heading Icons: Playboy, Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe.
Even the title was perverse. Hefner never met Marilyn Monroe, but used to collect items associated with her, some of which turned up in the auction of his effects.
Far from being an icon, Hefner is nowadays regarded as a seedy relic of an earlier age.
The founder and editor of the soft-porn Playboy magazine, he thought it made him look suave to be photographed in silk pyjamas surrounded by the 'Bunny Girls' who populated his manky Playboy 'mansion', with its whirlpool baths and circular beds.
Hefner saw himself as a smoothie-chops, but was what used to be known as a dirty old man, a cross between Sid James
