A pair of the famous ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore during the filming of 1939’s The Wizard of Oz sold for a whopping $28 million in auction on Saturday.
It was the largest amount garnered at an auction for entertainment memorabilia, auction house Heritage Auctions London told The New York Times. The pair, auctioned on behalf of collector Michael Shaw, are one of only four known surviving pairs the actress wore while working on the movie. The buyer was not publicly identified.
The $28 million bid exceeds the price of Marilyn Monroe’s famous subway dress from the 1955 film, The Seven Year Itch, which fetched $5.52 million with fees in 2011. Factoring taxes and fees, the slippers sold for $32.5 million.
Beyond the slippers’ appearance in key scenes from the beloved film, this particular pair of storied slippers traveled a long way to end up on the auction block.
Shaw loaned the slippers to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, when they were stolen during an August 2005 heist. The burglar smashed the Plexiglass case that held the slippers and absconded with them. There were no fingerprints left behind, and the museum’s alarm system did not alert a central dispatch. The only evidence left behind was one single red sequin. After several investigative leads ended in dead-ends and counterfeits, a promising tip to the FBI prompted a sting operation that ended in agents recovering the fabled slippers in Minneapolis In July 2018. Terry Martin was later indicted and pleaded guilty to the theft.
The heist, according to Martin and his lawyer, was an attempt at “one last score.” Martin, who once dealt in stolen jewels and served time for burglary, claimed at the time he was living quietly, but “an old mob associate” lured him to one more burglary. He was successful in nabbing the coveted slippers, but ultimately disappointed when he went to fence them and found that the rubies on the slippers were in fact not made of real jewels, but instead of glass. Mistakenly not recognizing their massive cultural worth, he left them with the man who recruited him for the heist.
Another pair are on display at the Smithsonian Institute, which was sold during an MGM auction in 1970 and later donated to the Smithsonian in 1979. A consultant from the institute found that while its pair and the ones that sold on Saturday bear a similar look, the latter pair appeared in many of the famous scenes in the film.
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