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A pair of ruby red slippers worn by actress Judy Garland in the classic movie The Wizard of Oz have been sold for $28-million at a US-based auction on Saturday.
One of four surviving pairs used in the film, the famed sequined pumps were once stolen from a Minnesota museum.
Online bidding started a month ago, with the slippers expected to fetch as much as $3-million at auction, according to Heritage Auctions – an under-estimate by $25-million.
The auctioneers called the slippers the “Holy Grail of Hollywood memorabilia” and said their selling price made them the most valuable movie memorabilia ever sold at auction.
Garland was only 16 when she played Dorothy in the classic 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz. Media outlet Variety ranked it second in its inaugural list of “100 Greatest Movies of All Time”.
One of the pairs is on exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. But this pair up for auction has its own unique history.
Collector Michael Shaw had loaned the slippers out to the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, when they were stolen in 2005.
Professional thief Terry Jon Martin used a hammer to smash the glass case and snatch the slippers, believing that their insured value of $1m must be because they were covered in actual gemstones.
But when he took them to a “fence” – an intermediary who sells stolen goods to discreet buyers – he discovered they were just glass.
So he gave the shoes to someone else. It wasn’t until 2018 that the FBI recovered the shoes in a sting operation. What happened to them in those 13 years is still not known.
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