Robin Williams auction: snap up a souvenir of a star
As the recently ended reality TV show Love Island proved, tens of thousands of the British public are not only obsessed with celebrities, but want to become celebrities – more than 85,000 people applied to be on the show this year, the show’s producers boasted. That’s only natural. “We are all to some degree fascinated by celebrity,” Nic McElhatton, a former Christie’s chairman, told The Independent last year amid a boom in celebrity auctions. After all, if you can’t grab the spotlight for yourself, the next best thing is to get as close to its radiating warmth as possible.
Collecting film memorabilia started off being about the film star. How that has changed was evident last September when two celebrity auctions were held days apart: one for the belongings of Vivien Leigh at Sotheby’s, the other for Audrey Hepburn at Christie’s. Leigh, an actress of the generation before Hepburn, appealed to a slightly different collector, as Scott Reyburn noted in The New York Times at the time. “The Vivien Leigh stardust inspired a succession of high prices for antiques that would have been worth little if owned by less celebrated mortals.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
For fans of older stars – who are more likely to be older themselves – “there’s a longing for that sense of mystique, of not knowing everything”, Julie Lobalzo Wright, a researcher in film and music stardom at the University of Warwick, told the paper. Owning something that belonged to the stars “makes them real”. Meanwhile, the items that belong to Hepburn, who was a style icon of the 1960s and who remains iconic today, attracted a record number of internet bids, implying greater interest from a younger set of fans who identified with the star.
Celebrity in the 21st century
Move on to today’s screen stars and it’s yet another story. In fact, in some cases the stars themselves are no longer even needed – the association is enough. Last September the Saatchi Gallery in London held “two days of unmissable experiences” for fans of the Kardashians, stars of their own reality TV show. “Though no Kardashian family members were present, nor any of their possessions, the event nonetheless attracted 200 visitors an hour,” says Reyburn. And when Kim Kardashian auctioned off her wardrobe earlier this year for charity, the venue was nothing as fusty as Sotheby’s or Christie’s. She used the online auction site eBay, which even has a page dedicated to clothing sold by the Kardashian family.
For fans who favour more classic collectables, the upcoming auction of art, memorabilia, watches and other effects owned by Robin Williams, who died in 2014, may have greater appeal. The items have been put up for auction by his former wife, Marsha Garces (pictured above with Williams as Mrs Doubtfire), at Sotheby’s in New York on 4 October, with the proceeds to go towards causes supported by the one-time couple. Lots include a set of 20 bronze sculptures by Magdalena Abakanowicz, valued at up to $600,000, and a Hook-themed pinball machine gifted to the actor in 1991 by the film’s director Steven Spielberg ($3,000-$5,000).
The $100k door
“In this celebrity-crazed age, what aspiring investment banker wouldn’t want to own the breastplate of Maximus for his office wall?” asks Matthew Phillp in Vanity Fair. Just such an opportunity arose in April when actor Russell Crowe called on the services of Sotheby’s to sell many of his belongings in a sale called “The Art of Divorce”. Live-streamed on Facebook, “it ricocheted between being a serious, formal sale of genuinely valuable items and a forum for irreverence”, says Phillp. At the end of the five hours, the breastplate, which Crowe wore in Gladiator, had sold for $117,000, a painting by Charles Blackman for $337,000 – and the actor’s leather jock strap, worn in Cinderella Man, for $6,500, well over its $460 estimate.
If an object is associated with a celebrity, whatever it is, it can be valuable, says Paul Sullivan in The New York Times. Guernsey’s, an auction house specialising in “nontraditional objects” sold 52 doors, also in April. These had been discarded during a renovation of the Chelsea Hotel in New York, and rescued by Jim Georgiou, a homeless man and former tenant of the hotel. Georgiou traced the doors to famous guests who had stayed behind them – and what had been viewed as rubbish proved to be valuable. The door to a room where Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen spent a night brought in $106,250. Andy Warhol’s door went for $65,225, and Jimi Hendrix’s fetched $16,250.
Auctions
Going
The convertible red sports car that had a starring role alongside actor Matthew Broderick in the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (above) is heading to auction with Mecum Auctions in California, in a sale over two days from 23 August. But all is not as it seems. While the car in the film is supposed to be a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California, the car for sale is one of two much cheaper 1985 Modena GT Spyder California replica models that were used instead. It was a Modena fiberglass shell that rolled out of a window to be destroyed at the end of the film – and little wonder. A real Ferrari 250 GT California fetched $17.2m in 2016. The Bueller Modena has previously sold for $230,000 in 2013.
Gone
The left “self-lacing” Nike Air Mags trainer worn by actor Michael J Fox in the 1989 film Back To The Future II sold for $92,100 on eBay last month. In the film, Marty McFly, played by Fox, travels forward in time to 2015, where shoes have “power laces” that can do themselves up. The proceeds from the sale of the shoe, which had belonged to a Nike employee in Oregon, went to the Michael J Fox Foundation for research into Parkinson’s Disease. The actor was diagnosed with the condition in 1991. Despite being in a crumbling state, the trainer attracted 220 bids.
This article was originally published in MoneyWeek
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
The magician who secretly smashed the Magic Circle's glass ceiling
Under The Radar Sophie Lloyd lurked in the all-male society by posing as a teenage boy for nearly two years, but was expelled after revealing her true identity
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
Kate Summerscale's 6 favorite true crime books about real murder cases
Feature The best-selling author recommends works by Helen Garner, Gwen Adshead, and more
By The Week US Published
-
Team of bitter rivals
Opinion Will internal tensions tear apart Trump's unlikely alliance?
By Theunis Bates Published
-
The Count of Monte Cristo review: 'indecently spectacular' adaptation
The Week Recommends Dumas's classic 19th-century novel is once again given new life in this 'fast-moving' film
By The Week UK Published
-
Death of England: Closing Time review – 'bold, brash reflection on racism'
The Week Recommends The final part of this trilogy deftly explores rising political tensions across the country
By The Week UK Published
-
Sing Sing review: prison drama bursts with 'charm, energy and optimism'
The Week Recommends Colman Domingo plays a real-life prisoner in a performance likely to be an Oscars shoo-in
By The Week UK Published
-
Kaos review: comic retelling of Greek mythology starring Jeff Goldblum
The Week Recommends The new series captures audiences as it 'never takes itself too seriously'
By The Week UK Published
-
Blink Twice review: a 'stylish and savage' black comedy thriller
The Week Recommends Channing Tatum and Naomi Ackie stun in this film on the hedonistic rich directed by Zoë Kravitz
By The Week UK Published
-
Shifters review: 'beautiful' new romantic comedy offers 'bittersweet tenderness'
The Week Recommends The 'inventive, emotionally astute writing' leaves audiences gripped throughout
By The Week UK Published
-
How to do F1: British Grand Prix 2025
The Week Recommends One of the biggest events of the motorsports calendar is back and better than ever
By Rebekah Evans, The Week UK Published
-
Twisters review: 'warm-blooded' film explores dangerous weather
The Week Recommends The film, focusing on 'tornado wranglers', stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell
By The Week UK Published