The city of Minneapolis Judy Garland’s famous ruby shoes from The Wizard of Oz, which were taken from a museum over twenty years ago, brought $28 million at auction on Saturday.
Heritage Auctions had predicted that they would sell for at least $3 million, but the frantic bidding quickly exceeded that figure by seconds and surpassed it in minutes. As the price rose to the final, jaw-dropping amount, a few bidders made phone proposals and volleyed back and forth for fifteen minutes.
The unidentified buyer will ultimately pay $32.5 million, which includes the fee paid to the Dallas-based auction firm.
Before live auction started late Saturday afternoon, online bidding, which started last month, had reached $1.55 million.
In 2005, Terry Jon Martin used a hammer to smash the glass of the museum’s display case and door when the glittering red heels were on show at the Judy Garland Museum in her birthplace of Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
Until the FBI found them in 2018, their whereabouts were unknown.Martin, who is currently 77 years old and resides in northern Minnesota close to Grand Rapids, was not made public as the thief until he was indicted in May 2023. His guilty plea was entered in October 2023.Due to his bad health, he was sentenced to time served last January while in a wheelchair and using supplemental oxygen.
Martin had a lengthy history of burglaries and receiving stolen property, and his lawyer, Dane DeKrey, explained prior to sentencing that he was trying to pull off one last score after an old associate with mob connections informed him that the shoes needed to be embellished with genuine jewels to support their $1 million insured value. However, a fence buyer who purchases stolen goods later informed him that the rubies were merely glass, according to DeKrey. Martin then threw the slippers away. The lawyer did not say how.
In March, the suspected fence, Jerry Hal Saliterman, 77, of the Crystal suburb of Minneapolis, was charged. When he appeared in court for the first time, he was also on oxygen and in a wheelchair. Although his lawyer has stated that he is not guilty, he has not made a plea and is set to stand trial in January.
After being loaned to the museum, the shoes were returned to memorabilia collector Michael Shaw in February. Only four pairs are known to have survived, though Garland wore numerous pairs during the filming. In the film, Dorothy had to click her heels three times and say, “There’s no place like home,” in order to get back to Kansas from Oz.
The sequined shoes from the well-known 1939 musical have seen more changes than the Yellow Brick Road, according to Rhys Thomas, author of The Ruby Slippers of Oz.
According to Robert Wilonsky, a vice president of the auction house, more than 800 people had been following the slippers, and by Thursday, the company’s webpage for the sale had received close to 43,000 page views.
The Judy Garland Museum was among those vying to take the shoes home, but soon after, it announced on Facebook that it had lost the bid. The museum has run a fundraising effort to augment the $100,000 this year that Minnesota lawmakers put aside to help the museum buy the shoes, as well as funds raised by the city of Grand Rapids at its annual Judy Garland festival.
The previous record for a piece of entertainment memorabilia was $5.52 million for the white frock Marilyn Monroe famously wore atop a windswept subway grate, the auctioneer informed bidders and viewers in the room and live after the slippers sold.
Other Wizard of Oz memorabilia, including a hat worn by Margaret Hamilton, who portrayed the first Wicked Witch of the West, was also up for auction. That item sold for $2.4 million, which means the buyer paid $2.93 million in total.
The release of the film Wicked, which is a prequel of sorts that reimagines the role of the Wicked Witch of the West and is an adaption of the Broadway musical, has brought new attention to the Wizard of Oz story in recent weeks.
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